I've just started working with M5 Tough (about a month). I can execute some code and tinker with the basics as I attempt to do something more advanced. I can answer some basic things I have tried.

The simple stuff:
I flashed the UIFLow 2.0 firmware using m5burner
Used the web uiflow software to write a basic program and pushed it onto the device.
Then, I connected to the device using Thonny. I can now write code in main.py (using UIFlow web IDE to figure out some code blocks and copy it into the main.py)

The things I am working on: (the documentation is terrible)

• Connect the device to a Bluetooth speaker
• Read a music file from an SD card and play it over Bluetooth

can you try adding ESP_ERROR_CHECK(esp_event_loop_create_default()); and see what errors you get?

When I compile and deploy my project, I see the following warning

i2c: This driver is an old driver; please migrate your application code to adapt driver/i2c_master.h,

which causes my system to never finish initialization. In my case, the M5Unified library needs to be updated to use driver/i2c_master.h

Perhaps your timeout is related to the loop never initializing. At this point, I am only guessing what the issue might be.