RingBuffer Library for Embedded Systems such as Arduino

A lightweight, header-only circular buffer for trivially copyable element types that mirrors the API in RingBuffer.h.

• Template-based buffer supporting trivially copyable T with a power-of-two capacity N.
• ESP32-friendly: per-instance spinlocks guard critical sections when ARDUINO_ARCH_ESP32 is defined.
• Overload-aware helpers for single items or contiguous blocks when calling push, pop, peek, and consume.
• Runtime helpers: available(), capacity(), and clear() provide buffer insights and maintenance.
• Optional overwriting behaviour during push to discard oldest data when the buffer is full.
• Optional caller-provided Storage lets the buffer wrap retained memory such as ESP32 RTC_DATA_ATTR.

Supported element types are POD-like values such as uint8_t, int16_t, float, or simple structs that are trivially copyable. Types with non-trivial constructors, destructors, or internal ownership such as String or std::string are intentionally not supported.

The class exposes the following methods:

• RingBuffer()
• RingBuffer(Storage& storage, bool preserve = false)
• push(const T& data, bool overwrite = false)
• push(const T* data, size_t data_len, bool overwrite = false)
• pop(T& output)
• pop(T* output, size_t len)
• peek(T& output) const
• peek(T* output, size_t len) const
• consume()
• consume(size_t len)
• available() const
• capacity() const
• clear()

For retained-memory use cases, declare RingBuffer<T, N>::Storage in the retained region and reconstruct RingBuffer<T, N> around it after reset.

The buffer automatically resets head and tail indexes when emptied and maintains a bounded element count to prevent overflow.

Clone or download uutzinger/RingBuffer into your Arduino libraries folder.

None

Urs Utzinger, 2025 ChatGPT, OpenAI

See LICENSE.