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Flashing

This document describes how to flash a binary released firmware into the ESP8266.

Introduction

For novice users, flashing a firmware into an ESP8266/NodeMCU board is quite a hurdle. Either they have to download and install the Arduino IDE with ESP8266 plugin or they have to use the command line esptool. The former is explained on the arduino page. The latter is explain below in Manual flashing.

However, this project has releases which come with a script that automates the manual flashing. This document explains how to take that shortcut in Scripted flashing below.

Scripted flashing

In a nutshell the flash procedure is as follows: download the release, unzip it, and double click flash.cmd.

The more detailed description:

  • Go to the release tab on the project's home page.
  • Scroll to find latest stable release. At the moment of writing this document the latest release is v4a.
  • Click the flash.zip file to download it.
  • Save to some easy location (e.g. Desktop, or Downloads).
  • Unzip flash.zip by right-clicking and Extract All... (or right-click, 7-Zip, Extract Here, if 7Zip is installed).
  • Connect the ESP8266/NodeMCU board with USB cable to PC.
  • Double click flash.cmd in the unzipped directory.
  • If a "Windows protected your PC" pops up: click More info and then the button Run anyway.
  • Press OK (see note 1 below)
  • Wait for flashing to complete successfully (see note 2 below).

You should now have this result.

Congratulations, you're done!

Note 1: COM ports

The ESP8266/NodeMCU board creates a COM port on the PC, and the script will send the firmware file to that COM port.

If there is only one COM port on your PC the script will select it automatically. If there are multiple COM ports you have to select the right one.

In case of doubt, run the script once without and once with the ESP8266/NodeMCU board connected and see which COM port is added the second time. That is the COM port you need to select.

Note 2: Flash failure

The script uses the esptool, and that sometimes can not find the ESP8266, and flashing fails. Give it another try.

Manual flashing

In case you do not want to use the script, this section describes how to flash manually.

You need

  • A flash tool
  • A firmware image
  • A connected ESP8266
  • To execute flash command

This description assumes the PC runs Windows 10. If you have an older version of Windows you need to install a driver for the ESP8266/NodeMCU board. That is not covered in this document.

The flash tool

To flash the ESP8266 a tool is needed. We will be using the esptool.exe.

If the Arduino IDE with ESP8266 support is installed on your Windows PC:

  • Locate the tool. On my system it is located at C:\Users\maarten\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\esp8266\tools\esptool\0.4.9\esptool.exe
  • Create a directory named flash on the Desktop.
  • Copy (don't move) the esptool.exe to that directory.

If there is no Arduino on your PC, follow these steps

  • Goto esptool-ck.
  • Scroll to find latest stable release. At the moment of writing this document the latest release is 0.4.9.
  • Click the Windows zip file (e.g. esptool-0.4.9-win32.zip) to download it.
  • Save on e.g. Desktop.
  • Unzip "Here".
  • Rename directory esptool-0.4.9-win32 to flash.

In either case there is now a directory named flash on the Desktop. Inside that directory there is esptool.exe.

The firmware image

To flash the ESP8266 a firmware image is needed. We will be using a binary release from this project.

Steps

  • Go to the release tab on the projects home page.
  • Scroll to find latest stable release. At the moment of writing this document the latest release is v4.
  • Click the bin file (e.g. mRPM.ino.bin) to download it.   Or download flash.zip which contains the bin.
  • Save in the flash directory (on the Desktop), created in the previous section.

ESP8266 connection

To flash the ESP8266 it needs to be connected to the PC using a USB cable.

Steps:

  • Start the Device Manager. On Windows 10, right-click on the start menu (the "Orb" in the lower left corner) and select Device Manager.
  • Open the section Ports (COM & LPT).
  • Plug USB cable in ESP8266/NodeMCU board and in the PC.
  • An entry appears in Ports (COM & LPT) (if the list is long it might help to unplug and replug to see it disappear and reappear).
  • The entry looks like USB-SERIAL CH340 (COM3). Note down the COM port number, here COM3.

Execute flashing

Now that everything is prepared, we are ready to flash.

Steps:

  • Make sure the ESP8266 is still connected with the USB cable to the PC.
  • While holding shift down, right-click on the flash directory on the Desktop and select Open powerShell window here (or alternatively Open command window here).
  • In the terminal that pops up enter this command 
    .\esptool  -cd nodemcu  -cb 512000  -cp COM3  -cf mRPM.ino.bin
    Replace COM3 with the COM port found in the previous section.
  • You should see 
    C:\Users\maarten\Desktop\flash>.\esptool  -cd nodemcu  -cb 512000  -cp COM3  -cf mRPM.ino.bin
Uploading 235264 bytes from mRPM.ino.bin to flash at 0x00000000
................................................................................ [ 34% ]
................................................................................ [ 69% ]
......................................................................           [ 100% ]
C:\Users\maarten\Desktop\flash>

(end of doc)