esptool(1) create and flash firmware files to ESP8266 or ESP32 chips

SYNOPSIS

esptool [,FLASH OPTION/]...
esptool [,CREATION OPTION/]...

DESCRIPTION

Flash firmware files to ESP8266 or ESP32 boards with ability to automatically put certain boards into UART bootloader programming mode. Or, extract code sections from ELF executable files to create firmware files for ESP chips.

OPTIONS

Flash:

-cp <device>
Select a serial port device to communicate with an ESP chip. Default is ,/dev/ttyUSB0/ on Linux, COM1 on Windows and ,/dev/tty.usbserial/ on Mac OS X.
-cb <baudrate>
Select the baud rate. Default is 115200.
-ca <address>
Flash memory address to upload the data to. Default is 0x00000000.
-cf <filename>
Upload the file to flash memory. Serial communication parameters and flash memory address must precede this argument.
-cp <size>
Pad last written section to the given size, in bytes.
-cc <chip>
Select chip to upload to. Currently supported values are: esp8266 (default), esp32.
-cd <board>
Reset board into bootloader mode. Default is none.

Resetting methods:

nodemcu
GPIO0 and RESET are controlled by two NPN transistors as implemented in NodeMCU devkit.
wifio
TXD controls GPIO0 via a PNP transistor, while DTR controls RESET via a capacitor.
ck
RTS controls RESET or CH_PD, while DTR controls GPIO0;
none
No DTR/RTS manipulation.

Firmware creation:

-eo <filename>
Open an ELF object file, parse it and cache information found therein. Only one input file could be opened at a time.
-es <section> <filename>
Read the given section from currently opened input file and make raw dump into the specified file.
-ec
Close the currently opened input file.
-bo <filename>
Prepare a new firmware image file for writing.
-bm <qio|qout|dio|dout>
Set the flash chip interface mode. Default is QIO. This parameter is stored in the firmware image header along with the flash size and flash frequency. ROM bootloader in the ESP chip uses this info to know how to talk to the flash memory chip.
-bz <512K|256K|1M|2M|4M|8M|16M|32M>
Set the flash chip size. Default is 512K.
-bf <40|26|20|80>
Set the flash chip frequency in MHz. Default is 40M.
-bs <section>
Read the specified section from the input file and append it to the firmware image. The sections will appear in the same order as the -bs options appear on the command line.
-bc
Flush the content into the firmware image and close the file.

Other:

-v
Display verbose informational messages. Add more v's to increase verbosity level, e.g. -vv, -vvv.
-q
Suppress informational messages.
--help
Display help.
--version
Display program version information.

EXAMPLES

Flash Lua script firmware to a NodeMCU board:
esptool -cd nodemcu -cf nodemcu_integer_0.9.5_20150318.bin

Flash MicroPython for ESP8266 firmware to a Huzzah or EzSBC ESP board: First reset the board into flash programming mode. Holod GPIO0/Flash button and press reset button, release the reset button and finally release the GPIO0/Flash button. Then run the following command:

esptool -cf firmware-combined.bin

Flash Espressif AT v0.50 firmware to an ESP board: First manually reset the board into flash programming mode or use correct -cd option, then run:

esptool -ca 0x00000 -cf noboot/eagle.flash.bin -ca 0x40000 -cf noboot/eagle.irom0text.bin -ca 0x3e000 -cf blank.bin -ca 0x7c000 -cf esp_init_data_default.bin -ca 0x7E000 -cf blank.bin

Create firmware files from app.elf. Note the option for 4M flash size.

esptool -bz 4M -eo app.elf -bo app_00000.bin -bs .text -bs .data -bs .rodata -bc -ec -eo app.elf -es .irom0.text app_40000.bin -ec

Then, flash the created firmware to the board:

esptool -cf 00000.bin -ca 0x40000 -cf 40000.bin

AUTHOR

Written by Christian Klippel.

COPYRIGHT

Copyright © 2014, 2015, 2016 Christian Klippel, Ivan Grokhotkov, Milan Kupcevic. This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; not even for MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. This program is licensed under the terms of the GNU GPL version 2 or any later version as published by the Free Software Foundation.