ESP-IDF Sample Project

Introduction

This is a relative simple and small project I've created to teach myself how to code, build and flash an ESP32 project using the ESP-IDF tools directly, i.e., no IDE required, only a text editor and the terminal.

Plus, the project shows

• how to structure the code onto components (“componentize”);
• how to make some project parameters configurable through menuconfig.

The project has two main components:

• the output_pin_toggler, used to blink an LED connected to pin 16 of the board;
• the random_numbers_getter, used to simulate the values of sensors.

Each component is used by two independent running tasks, led_blinker_task and fake_sensors_value_printer_task.

Assumptions

It is assumed:

• one is using any GNU/Linux operating system distribution;
• one has an ESP32 module laying around, for flashing and testing;
• one has already followed the Espressif documentation on how to install the ESP-IDF toolchain on one's machine; and
• the installation location is the default one, i.e. the ~/esp/esp-idf directory.

Steps

Set up the environment

With this project cloned and the terminal open in the project's root directory, run

source ~/esp/esp-idf/export.sh

Set target board

To set a generic ESP32 as the target board, run

idf.py set-target esp32

Please refer to the Espressif documentation in order to set a different board as the target.

Configure

To configure project-specific parameters, run

idf.py menuconfig

Navigate through:

• Project-specific configuration;
  • Blink GPIO number: default is pin 16;
  • Waiting period in ms: default is 1000 milliseconds (= 1 second).

Build

To build the project, run

idf.py build

Flash and monitor the serial output

Assuming the board has been already connected to any USB port of one's machine, and the device is the /dev/ttyUSB0, run

idf.py -p /dev/ttyUSB0 flash monitor

Clean

To remove the artifacts produced by the build process, run

rm -rf sdkconfig* build/

Credits

Thanks to this YouTube video by Low Level Learning for inspiring me to create this project.

Also thanks to Espressif for providing project examples on ESP-32, which are located in ~/esp/esp-idf/examples directory.