I have some ESP32 based boards lying around and stumbled across MicroPython, which appealed to me as I have some Python code I wanted to try and port to an ESP32 board. MicroPython supports ESP32 and any board should work, I am using an ESP32-WROOM-32.
Download the firmware
Download the latest version of the firmware from the MicroPython website, at the time of writing this was version 1.18 for the generic ESP32.
Flashing the firmware
Esptool must be used to flash the firmware, install via pip -:
pip install esptoolUse esptool to erase the flash and then flash the firmware, note I am using a Macbook so my serial port is /dev/cu.usbserial-0001, Windows users use whatever your serial port is -:
esptool.py --port/dev/cu.usbserial-0001erase_flash
You can then deploy the downloaded firmware -:
esptool.py --chip esp32 --port /dev/cu.usbserial-0001 write_flash -z 0x1000 esp32-20220117-v1.18.bin
Connecting via serial to the ESP board with a baud rate of 115200 should present you with an interactive python prompt.
In another post we will create a python script and have the ESP32 run this script on boot.