30. August 2022

Unable to flash ESP32 (S2, S3, C3) with these USB-C cables

USB-C is becoming more and more popular. A straightforward assumption is that you can replace the old cable with a USB-A connector with USB-C, and everything should be the same. This assumption is wrong.

Some cables do not work well with ESP32, S2, S3, and C3. Here you can find information about cables which does not work and it’s not possible to flash dev boards with the chip with espflash, idf.py or esptool.py.

A typical error message looks like this:

Serial port: /dev/tty.usbserial-110
Connecting...

Unable to connect, retrying with extra delay...
Unable to connect, retrying with default delay...
Unable to connect, retrying with extra delay...
Error: espflash::connection_failed

  × Error while connecting to device
  ╰─▶ Failed to connect to the device
  help: Ensure that the device is connected and the reset and boot pins are not being held down

USB-C to micro-USB connected to boards ESP32-S2-USB-OTG and ESP32-S3-USB-OTG, length 60 cm, marks on cable “AWM 80 C 30V VW-1 USB 2.0 CABLE”:

  • directly connected to mac M1 2020 – does not work
  • workaround #1: press and hold boot button on the board, start flash command, release boot button after flashing process starts
  • workaround #2: connect mac M1 to monitor/hub with USB-C and connect the cable there
  • workaround #3: use computer with Windows or Linux, the cable seems to work correctly with these OSes

3. September 2021

How to flash ESP32 from WSL

WSL (Windows Subsystems for Linux) is a great way how to build projects based on ESP-IDF. The problem is how to flash the image from WSL Linux to a real chip?

Right now only WSL1 supports mapping of Windows COM ports to Linux /dev/ttyS*.

First of all, make sure that your image is running WSL1 (which is slower than WSL2):

wsl -l -v

In the case of WSL2 image, you can convert it by the following command (let assume the image of Ubuntu):

wsl -t Ubuntu
wsl --set-version Ubuntu 1

Use Windows Device Manager to determine COM ports of your ESP chip. Similar could be achieved by command:

mode

The number of COM.. device will be mapped to the /dev/ttyS.. in Linux.

Start the Linux terminal (e.g. using Windows Terminal). Grant permission so that your user can read write /dev/ttyS* or add your user to dialout group if supported by distribution. Note: on Linux, the device is often mapped to /dev/ttyUSB*, notice the difference on Windows /dev/ttyS*.

chmod a+rw /dev/ttyS*

Build and flash the project. It’s necessary to specify the device name, because autodetection in idf.py is not able to find /dev/ttyS. The second important part is to set the communication speed by “-b” option.

idf.py flash --port /dev/ttyS11 -b 115200
idf.py monitor --port /dev/ttyS11

The last command should launch idf monitor, which you can terminate by CTRL+].

If you’re WSL2 user, you can try alternative approach using idfx tool.

27. June 2020

ESP32 erase_flash failed with “Invalid head of packet”

The first step before installing MicroPython to ESP32 is to erase the flash.

I’ve installed all necessary software like esptool, but the flashing was failing with error:

esptool.py --chip esp32 --port /dev/ttyUSB0 erase_flash                                                                                                         ──(Sat,Jun27)─┘
esptool.py v2.8
Serial port /dev/ttyUSB0
Connecting........_____....._____....._____....._____....._____....._____....._____

A fatal error occurred: Failed to connect to ESP32: Invalid head of packet (0x1B)

The solution to the problem is to pres and hold BOOT button. Then start erase command mentioned above.

After the initial erase I was able to flash there MicroPython:

esptool.py --chip esp32 --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 460800 write_flash -z 0x1000 esp32-idf4-20200627-unstable-v1.12-590-g9f911d822.bin

Then it was possible to connect via rshell:

rshell -p /dev/ttyUSB0                                                                                                                                          ──(Sat,Jun27)─┘
Using buffer-size of 32
Connecting to /dev/ttyUSB0 (buffer-size 32)...
Trying to connect to REPL  connected
Testing if ubinascii.unhexlify exists ... Y
Retrieving root directories ... /boot.py/
Setting time ... Jun 27, 2020 20:46:47
Evaluating board_name ... pyboard
Retrieving time epoch ... Jan 01, 2000
Welcome to rshell. Use Control-D (or the exit command) to exit rshell.

/home/georgik/projects/esp32> cd /pyboard/
/pyboard> ls
boot.py

7. January 2011

How to dump POST request with Python

Python contains one helpful module: SimpleHTTPServer. You can expose local directory via HTTP by the following command:

python -m SimpleHTTPServer

Python will start HTTP server at http://localhost:8000

It is very worthy when you’re doing some tests of web application.

The only problem is that SimpleHTTPServer does not support POST. Sometimes it’s very useful to see the content of POST request.

Is there any simple way how to achieve this in Python?

Here is a small extension of SimpleHTTPServer with do_POST handler:

import SimpleHTTPServer
import SocketServer
import logging
import cgi

PORT = 8000

class ServerHandler(SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler):

    def do_GET(self):
        logging.error(self.headers)
        SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler.do_GET(self)

    def do_POST(self):
        logging.error(self.headers)
        form = cgi.FieldStorage(
            fp=self.rfile,
            headers=self.headers,
            environ={'REQUEST_METHOD':'POST',
                     'CONTENT_TYPE':self.headers['Content-Type'],
                     })
        for item in form.list:
            logging.error(item)
        SimpleHTTPServer.SimpleHTTPRequestHandler.do_GET(self)

Handler = ServerHandler

httpd = SocketServer.TCPServer(("", PORT), Handler)

print "serving at port", PORT
httpd.serve_forever()

You can download SimpleServer.py here and start it with command:

python SimpleServer.py

24. December 2009

Flash Game: Snowflakes – PF 2010

Collect all snowflakes. Click at the blue part of the screen to start the game.

Source code available in FXP format.

You can find more games at georgik.rocks/tag/games/