IDEs/Tools for ESP32 development

PlatformIO CLI: https://docs.platformio.org/en/stable/core/index.html
PlatformIO IDE: A VSCode extension https://docs.platformio.org/en/stable/integration/ide/pioide.html
ESPTool: https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esptool/en/latest/esp32/
ESP-IDF: Eclipse Plugin + VSCode extension https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf
Arduino CLI: https://github.com/arduino/arduino-cli
VSCode-Arduino: https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-arduino
Legacy Arduino IDE: https://www.arduino.cc/en/software

PlatformIO based tools can work both with Arduino as well as Espressif libraries.

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esp32-emulate.md

Emulate

Espressif comes with a QEMU for for emulating ESP32 and related SoCs.

https://github.com/espressif/qemu

Precompiled binary in releases.

Tutorial: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=lZp9L7Ij4Yo

ESP32 QEMU Emulation within a Docker Container: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2303.10204.pdf

Simulate

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platformio-setup.md

PlatformIO Setup

The PlatformIO extension can be installed in VSCode. The extension also needs an installation of Python 3.6 or above. The virtualenv module (venv pypi package) must be available as well.

Forcing PlatformIO to use a different Python installation other than the system installed is tricky. PlatformIO does not work with a conda Python environment. The workaround is to use a portable Python build from python-build-standalone project.

Using pip from portable Python, install the platformio package as

pip install platformio

Now open VSCode and Install the PlatformIO extension. Once installed open VSCode user settings, search for PlatformIO and use the following options:

Use a built-in PlatformIO Core: Untick

Use a portable Python3 interpreter if available: Untick

Custom Path: (Edit in settings.json)

The corresponding settings.json file looks like

"platformio-ide.customPATH": "/home/ubuntu/python3.11-pio/python/bin/",
"platformio-ide.useBuiltinPython": false,
"platformio-ide.useBuiltinPIOCore": false,

Restart VSCode after and PlatformIO should work.

Other Issues

PlatformIO Home does not open when using the PlatformIO extension from a remote VSCode setup (like code tunnel or VSCode server). This is because the extension tries to connect to the PlatformIO core web server started on localhost on opening the PIO home page. When VSCode is accessed remotely the localhost from the web browser's context is not the same as the localhost of the system where PlatformIO core is installed.

In such cases use the PlatformIO Core CLI to create a new project from the command line and open the folder in VSCode instead.

Example

 mkdir my-esp32-project
 cd my-esp32-project
 pio project init --board esp32doit-devkit-v1

The list of available boards can be found by running pio boards <boardname> (pio boards esp32) and at https://docs.platformio.org/en/latest/boards/index.html.

More details: https://docs.platformio.org/en/stable/core/quickstart.html

Then open the directory my-esp32-project in VSCode to continue development. PlatformIO will recognize the project as usual.

Compiling from the CLI

The CLI gude can be found at: https://docs.platformio.org/en/stable/core/userguide/index.html

pio run

Use the -v / --verbose argument for the detailed commands being run

Cleaning build files

pio run --target clean

or pio run -t clean -v

Uploading build files without compiling

This is useful when we do not want to distribute the source code of the firmware. We can delete the source directories (include/, lib/, source/, test/) and keep the other directories including the .pio directory. Then in the project folder