ESP32 Feather COM error in Arduino IDE

[robbiek448]

Hello,

I am new to working with ESP32 modules am hoping for some guidance. I have an ESP32-S3 Feather and am trying to upload a basic program to get the MAC address using Arduino IDE. I get the following error: "A fatal error occurred: Could not open COM6, the port is busy or doesn't exist."

I have installed everything following along with a tutorial (board manager, drivers, etc.) and am able to successfully upload the code to an ESP32 Itsybitsy that I also have with no issue. The Feather shows up in my device manager and in the Arduino IDE where I can select the port and board. It is just when I finally try to upload that I get this error message.

I've tried uninstalling and reinstalling all of the drivers and board manager, restarting my laptop, new cables in case they are power only, the boot button on the Feather itself, etc. with no luck.

I am using Arduino IDE 2.3.4 and esp32 board manager 3.1.1.

Any help is very much appreciated!

[lbernstone]

Set USB-CDC on boot enabled, and Upload Mode to Hardware CDC.
For the first upload, hold down the boot pin while you press reset. This will put it into download mode. After you upload the first firmware with those settings, it will behave much more normally. I do not find these boards without a UART adapter to be very useful for most development.

[robbiek448]

Thank you so much it worked!