Notifications
Clear all
Topic starter
2021-12-21 5:15 pm
Greetings --
I'd like to ask members of the DroneBot Workshop forum for some guidance as to how to solve my ESP-32S downloading problems. My story is as follows:
About 9 months ago I purchased a couple of ESP-32S boards (or what the seller on Amazon claimed were ESP-32S boards - the metal can over the module says ESP-WROOM-32). I found a sketch on the Internet for a WiFi scanner. Loaded the code into the Arduino IDE, downloaded it, ran it, and saw that it showed several WiFi access points. All was good. And I then put the ESP-32 aside.
Now, 9 months later, I come back and want to see if I can do some MQTT work with the ESP-32S, and to get reacquainted I tried to run the DroneBot ESP32 blink sketch, but I can't get it to download (nor the WiFi scanner from before). I get the CONNECTING followed by the dots and underscores, and then it times out. As for what might have changed in the last 9 months, I'm sure I'm running a newer version of the Arduino IDE than I was 9 months ago, I'm sure that something Python related may have changed when I installed the DX Core (to support the AVR-DB products) or the megaTinyCore (to support the ATTINY-1 products), since those devices need Python for UPDI programming. I know that Python 2.7 is in the path on my computer because I can invoke Python regardless of which directory I'm in when I try to start it. And I can see the ESP-32's CP210x at Port 13 in the device manager. When I see the CONNECTED message I press the BOOT button (I've tried repeatedly pressing the button, as well as pressing and holding). I've tried this on two different ESP-32S board and get the same results on both.
This is the dialog and error message I get:
esptool.py v3.1
Serial port COM13
Connecting........_____....._____....._____....._____....._____....._____....._____A fatal error occurred: Failed to connect to ESP32-S2: Timed out waiting for packet header
A fatal error occurred: Failed to connect to ESP32-S2: Timed out waiting for packet header
Anyway, I'm hoping that the collective knowledge of the Forum users and give me some hints as to what I might try next.
Thank you, Paul
2021-12-21 6:34 pm
Hi @micropaul,
I am not sure about the board you have, so you may need to look up the documentation, but the ESP-32 CAM boards need the IO0 pin pulled to ground during the download process, and then the link removed to run the program after downloading. Does that apply to your board as well? I am wondering if BOOT is a reset function to restart the processor, assuming it has already been programmed.
Best wishes, Dave
2021-12-22 12:27 am
Are you connecting to your ESP32 from the Arduino IDE to upload a sketch. If so what provokes the esptool.py message. Are you perhaps using esptool.py to erase the ESP32, perhaps in readiness to load micropython? (which has a very good and robust mqtt library I mention in passing 😀 )
Topic starter
2021-12-23 3:24 pm
Thank you Dave and Byron for your suggestions.
I'm not sure yet what is causing the download problems re Pyton, but I'm now getting a better understanding of what's going on.
I moved to my laptop, which had a 2018 version of Arduino IDE, updated that, added the JSON and then Espressif ESP stuff via board manager. When I compile and tried to download into the ESP module I got an error that said words of the effect "This board is an ESP-32 and *not* an ESP-32S". So then I then knew I had ESP-32 boards and not ESP-32S (although I thought I had bought and was told I had bought ESP-32S). Anyway, when I selected ESP-32 as the board type then everything worked fine, the sketch ran and functioned as expected. I was also able to compile, download and successfully run the WiFi scan sketch.
So, at this point, I have something that works, just not on my primary development PC. I have a bit more investigation to do. I have followed the Adafruit procedure for setting up Serial Python, but that doesn't seem to be my problem.
Thanks again for your assistance.
Paul
DaveE reacted