ESP32 Forum

Hi Gurus

right now, I am using Arduino to do the first time flash of the ESP32 chip on my board.
after that, all future flashing of my own firmware, I am using Esptool directly to do the work (I am on a Mac)

esptool.py --port /dev/cu.usbserial-AC01WJQX -b 921600 write_flash 0x10000 ./my_firmware.bin


However, if I have a brand new ESP chip, and if I do the Esptool flashing directly, the chip won't even run the firmware at all. I figure that, arduino does some magic when I use it to do the firs time flashing. Since Arduino is using Esptool underlying to flash ESP32 too. it must have run some command with Esptool to configure/format the ESP32.

Now, question, how do I using Esptool on command line directly to configure/format ESP32, then flash my own proper firmware ?

below are actually the output in the arduino app, I can see Arduino seems using Esptool to flash location: 0x0000e000 first with some stub.. or boot loader?

below are the configuration on my Arduino IDE for the ESP chip I am using.
Board: esp32 pico kit
upload speed: 921600
partition scheme: minimum spiffs (large OTA)
core debug level: debug.

There indeed is a bootloader and a partition table binary that Arduino also flashes and that you need in your ESP32 for it to start correctly. Unfortunately I don't know enough about Arduino to tell you where you might find those.

I found them guided by a friend , if you just enable verbose output in the Arduino IDE, it will print out the esptool command it used to do everything