I am trying to work with the Espressif javascript utility that willl flash an ESP32.  This will eventually be used as part of a website that will let the user update their product when new firmware is available.

We intend to make it simpler than the utility is at present.  One reason is that things can get messed up if the few options present are not set correctly.

As a test example, I am using a development board provided by AutoSport Labs.  It may have it's own idiosyncrocies and I will try other boards as well but I did have an issue with this one.

At one point, I got the board into that loop where the ESP32-S3 kept resetting. Manually putting the board into program mode stopped that and allowed the reflashing of the program.  It took but did not work, even after erasing the flash before programming.

The only way to fix the issue was to use the VS/VM IDE to reflash the board.  This "repaired" things and all was well.

This is a long start to what I believe to be a simple solution.  I think that in the java utilility, I need to load the same bin files that are used when loading from the VS/VM UI.   

In verbose mode, I can see that four bin files are loaded.  They are loaded at 0x0, 0x8000, 0xE000, and the program bin at 0x10000.

I believe that two of the first three are the bootloader and the partition bin files.  Don't know what the third is.

So my question is, what are the first three bin files, and where are they located?  This way, I can have the javascript routine always load the right files in the right place without the user having to deal with it.

Hope this all makes sense.

Thanks.

Great progress.  I was able to locate all of the bin files and we figured out how to load them, in what order, and at what address so that the ESP32 is completely reflashed, even after it goes into that reboot loop.

Just one more small thing that would help....

Yes, the release folder does have the application bin file.  As you already know, all of the bin files are created in a folder under VMBuilds under the user folder on the computer.  It also contains a file that is a merge of all the bin files.  This file just needs to be loaded to 0x0 and all it well!!

So my question is, can VM put that merged bin file in the release folder or some other place that is more convenient than having it buried deep into bowels of the user folder.

Thanks very much.

I copy my bin files automatically at the end of a build to (in my case) c:\temp
I also use the command to build the "supporting files" (the files from the data folder) and to save it to c:\temp. It also includes the possibility to copy a version file I have in the build called FWVersion.h that I update before each build.

In the board.txt file I have added:

#Copy bin file to directory
recipe.objcopy.hex.pattern.1.pattern=cmd.exe /c {build.project_path}\copyme.bat {build.project_path}\FWVersion.h {vm.last.buildpath}\{build.project_name}.bin c:\temp\ "{menu.fsupload.littlefs.runtime.tools.mklittlefs.path}\mklittlefs.exe" {build.project_path}\data

In my project I have a batch file called copyme.bat
The batch file has the following:

@echo off
setlocal EnableDelayedExpansion
set file=%1

for /F "tokens=1-3 delims=N " %%a in (%file%) do (
   for %%A in (%%a %%b %%c) do set "i=%%A"
)

set from=%2
set dest=%3

copy %from% %dest%AHRS.ino.bin

set mkspiffs=%4
set littlefsdir=%5

%mkspiffs% -c %littlefsdir% -p 256 -b 4096 -s 307200 "c:\temp/AHRS.ino.littlefs.bin"

I have hard coded the name (AHRS) of my bin files but it would be possible to make them one of the parameters passed in to the batch file.

Maybe this is what you want. Hope this helps.