ESP32

Overview

ESP32 is a series of low cost, low power system on a chip microcontrollers with integrated Wi-Fi & dual-mode Bluetooth. The ESP32 series employs a Tensilica Xtensa LX6 microprocessor in both dual-core and single-core variations. ESP32 is created and developed by Espressif Systems, a Shanghai-based Chinese company, and is manufactured by TSMC using their 40nm process. 1

The features include the following:

  • Dual core Xtensa microprocessor (LX6), running at 160 or 240MHz

  • 520KB of SRAM

  • 802.11b/g/n/e/i

  • Bluetooth v4.2 BR/EDR and BLE

  • Various peripherals:

    • 12-bit ADC with up to 18 channels

    • 2x 8-bit DACs

    • 10x touch sensors

    • Temperature sensor

    • 4x SPI

    • 2x I2S

    • 2x I2C

    • 3x UART

    • SD/SDIO/MMC host

    • Slave (SDIO/SPI)

    • Ethernet MAC

    • CAN bus 2.0

    • IR (RX/TX)

    • Motor PWM

    • LED PWM with up to 16 channels

    • Hall effect sensor

  • Cryptographic hardware acceleration (RNG, ECC, RSA, SHA-2, AES)

  • 5uA deep sleep current

System requirements

Prerequisites

The ESP32 toolchain xtensa-esp32-elf is required to build this port. The toolchain installation can be performed in two ways:

  1. Automatic installation

    west espressif install

    Note

    By default, the toolchain will be downloaded and installed under $HOME/.espressif directory (%USERPROFILE%/.espressif on Windows).

  2. Manual installation

    Follow the ESP32 Toolchain link to download proper OS package version. Unpack the toolchain file to a known location as it will be required for environment path configuration.

Build Environment Setup

Some variables must be exported into the environment prior to building this port. Find more information at Environment Variables on how to keep this settings saved in you environment.

Note

In case of manual toolchain installation, set ESPRESSIF_TOOLCHAIN_PATH accordingly. Otherwise, set toolchain path as below. If necessary, update the version folder path as in esp-2020r3-8.4.0.

On Linux and macOS:

export ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT="espressif"
export ESPRESSIF_TOOLCHAIN_PATH="${HOME}/.espressif/tools/zephyr"

On Windows:

# on CMD:
set ESPRESSIF_TOOLCHAIN_PATH=%USERPROFILE%\.espressif\tools\zephyr
set ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT=espressif

# on PowerShell
$env:ESPRESSIF_TOOLCHAIN_PATH="$env:USERPROFILE\.espressif\tools\zephyr"
$env:ZEPHYR_TOOLCHAIN_VARIANT="espressif"

Finally, retrieve required submodules to build this port. This might take a while for the first time:

west espressif update

Note

It is recommended running the command above after west update so that submodules also get updated.

Flashing

The usual flash target will work with the esp32 board configuration. Here is an example for the Hello World application.

# From the root of the zephyr repository
west build -b esp32 samples/hello_world
west flash

Refer to Building an Application and Run an Application for more details.

It’s impossible to determine which serial port the ESP32 board is connected to, as it uses a generic RS232-USB converter. The default of /dev/ttyUSB0 is provided as that’s often the assigned name on a Linux machine without any other such converters.

The baud rate of 921600bps is recommended. If experiencing issues when flashing, try halving the value a few times (460800, 230400, 115200, etc). It might be necessary to change the flash frequency or the flash mode; please refer to the esptool documentation for guidance on these settings.

All flashing options are now handled by the West (Zephyr’s meta-tool) tool, including flashing with custom options such as a different serial port. The west tool supports specific options for the ESP32 board, as listed here:

--esp-idf-path ESP_IDF_PATH

path to ESP-IDF

--esp-device ESP_DEVICE

serial port to flash, default $ESPTOOL_PORT if defined. If not, esptool will loop over available serial ports until it finds ESP32 device to flash.

--esp-baud-rate ESP_BAUD_RATE

serial baud rate, default 921600

--esp-flash-size ESP_FLASH_SIZE

flash size, default “detect”

--esp-flash-freq ESP_FLASH_FREQ

flash frequency, default “40m”

--esp-flash-mode ESP_FLASH_MODE

flash mode, default “dio”

--esp-tool ESP_TOOL

if given, complete path to espidf. default is to search for it in [ESP_IDF_PATH]/components/esptool_py/ esptool/esptool.py

--esp-flash-bootloader ESP_FLASH_BOOTLOADER

Bootloader image to flash

--esp-flash-partition_table ESP_FLASH_PARTITION_TABLE

Partition table to flash

For example, to flash to /dev/ttyUSB2, use the following command after having build the application in the build directory:

west flash -d build/ --skip-rebuild --esp-device /dev/ttyUSB2

Using JTAG

As with much custom hardware, the ESP-32 modules require patches to OpenOCD that are not upstream. Espressif maintains their own fork of the project here. By convention they put it in ~/esp next to the installations of their toolchain and SDK:

cd ~/esp

git clone https://github.com/espressif/openocd-esp32

cd openocd-esp32
./bootstrap
./configure
make

On the ESP-WROVER-KIT board, the JTAG pins are connected internally to a USB serial port on the same device as the console. These boards require no external hardware and are debuggable as-is. The JTAG signals, however, must be jumpered closed to connect the internal controller (the default is to leave them disconnected). The jumper headers are on the right side of the board as viewed from the power switch, next to similar headers for SPI and UART. See ESP-WROVER-32 V3 Getting Started Guide for details.

On the ESP-WROOM-32 DevKitC board, the JTAG pins are not run to a standard connector (e.g. ARM 20-pin) and need to be manually connected to the external programmer (e.g. a Flyswatter2):

ESP32 pin

JTAG pin

3V3

VTRef

EN

nTRST

IO14

TMS

IO12

TDI

GND

GND

IO13

TCK

IO15

TDO

Once the device is connected, you should be able to connect with (for a DevKitC board, replace with esp32-wrover.cfg for WROVER):

cd ~/esp/openocd-esp32
src/openocd -f interface/ftdi/flyswatter2.cfg -c 'set ESP32_ONLYCPU 1' -c 'set ESP32_RTOS none' -f board/esp-wroom-32.cfg -s tcl

The ESP32_ONLYCPU setting is critical: without it OpenOCD will present only the “APP_CPU” via the gdbserver, and not the “PRO_CPU” on which Zephyr is running. It’s currently unexplored as to whether the CPU can be switched at runtime or if breakpoints can be set for either/both.

Now you can connect to openocd with gdb and point it to the OpenOCD gdbserver running (by default) on localhost port 3333. Note that you must use the gdb distributed with the ESP-32 SDK. Builds off of the FSF mainline get inexplicable protocol errors when connecting.

~/esp/xtensa-esp32-elf/bin/xtensa-esp32-elf-gdb outdir/esp32/zephyr.elf
(gdb) target remote localhost:3333

Further documentation can be obtained from the SoC vendor in JTAG debugging for ESP32.

Note on Debugging with GDB Stub

GDB stub is enabled on ESP32.

  • When adding breakpoints, please use hardware breakpoints with command hbreak. Command break uses software breakpoints which requires modifying memory content to insert break/trap instructions. This does not work as the code is on flash which cannot be randomly accessed for modification.

References

1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESP32