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How to Flash the Master Board

Install esp-idf

The master board is based on a ESP32 module programmed in C++ using the esp-idf SDK. Currently, the firmware is only compatible up to the esp-idf version 3.x. While this pull request has made the firmware compatible with the esp-idf version 4.0.1, it is not merged to the main branch. See more discussion on this issue. The instruction below will first utilize the installtion script from version 4.0.1 and later roll back to an older commit when flashing the master board.

To install the SDK, first install the dependencies

sudo apt-get install git wget flex bison gperf python3 python3-pip python3-setuptools cmake ninja-build ccache libffi-dev libssl-dev dfu-util

Then, make sure that your system python points to Python3. If not, run the following command to do so

sudo update-alternatives --install /usr/local/bin/python python /usr/bin/python3 10

Note : If for some reason you have to use Python2, you need to install packages at specific versions before running the installation: pip install python-socketio==1.5.0 Flask-SocketIO==2.9.

Now, clone and install the esp-idf repo

mkdir ~/esp
cd ~/esp
git clone -b v4.0.1 --recursive https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf.git
cd ~/esp/esp-idf
./install.sh

For more details, refer to the offical documentation of esp-idf. We link the documentation for 4.0.3 because the documentation for 4.0.1 is broken at the time of writing. But the content should not differ much.

Finally, you need to install the esptool. You can install it via pip:

pip install esptool

Flashing the firmware

The firmware of the ESP32 can be found in this repo https://github.com/open-dynamic-robot-initiative/master-board.

To flash the firmware without admin rights, make sure your local user is part of the dialout group. You can check the groups of your current user using the groups command and add the user to the dialout group using the command

sudo usermod -a -G dialout $USER

You need to reboot your computer for this change to take effect.

The master board need to be connected to a host computer via the PROG connector, and to be powered from a DC source from 5V to 60V. The programmer is a simple USB to SERIAL adapter with line RTS and DTR accessible.

To put the ESP32 in a flash mode, a special circuit is needed to lower the G0 pin from the RTS and DTR lines and generate a reset. To avoid using a dedicated hardware, we can use an ESP dev board containing this circuit and the USB to SERIAL adapter, where the orginal ESP module have been removed:

Wiring of the esp32

Wiring esp32 to master-board

On a freshly assembled board, we first need to burn a configuration fuse because of a conflict with a boot pin. To do so, use the espefuse.py script: (the fuse burning process is irreversible, be sure to only execute the following command). If you successfully installed esptool, you should be able to do it by directly running the following command

espefuse.py set_flash_voltage 3.3V

To flash the board, the esp environment variables must be sourced:

  • Either you installed esp-idf in the standard path, which would be the case if you followed the instructions above. You can simply do: 
    cd master-board/firmware
source setup_esp_idf.bash
  • Or you can source the export.sh in the esp-idf repo (This requires a version higher than 4.0). Assuming the esp-idf installation is under ~/esp/esp-idf: 
    cd ~/esp/esp-idf
source export.sh

Now, you need to roll back to an older commit of esp-idf. See more discussion on this issue.

cd ~/esp/esp-idf
git checkout 8d1a9c0 # Need to checkout this old version for now
git submodule update --init --recursive

Then, from the master-board/firmware folder, you can run:

  • Flash the board: make flash
  • Change configurations: make menuconfig
  • Debug the board: make monitor