How to Overcome Initial Hurdles with Development Boards

Development boards may seem simple, but many people get stuck at the first step. Today, I will teach you how to solve these small problems.

First, let’s talk about Arduino series development boards.

There are mainly two issues with Arduino: one is downloading the Arduino IDE and the selection process.

First, the official website for Arduino is Arduino.cc. Click on software to access the Arduino IDE download page.

Currently, there are two versions available: a new version 2.2 and an old version 1.8.19. Both can be used.

However, when downloading, be careful. There are two options: a standard installation package which installs smoothly but creates some files in the system.

Some people prefer a cleaner approach and opt for a portable ZIP package. However, the compressed package has a drawback; the installation package automatically installs the Arduino drivers, which the ZIP package skips.

If you plug in the development board directly at this point, it may not work.

This leads to a common issue faced by many when using development boards: the USB driver problem.

If your development board’s USB programming chip driver is installed in the system, it will be automatically set up. However, if your computer system is older and lacks that driver, you will need to download it online.

Check your development board; it will have a programming chip. Look at the model on the chip, such as CP2102 or CH340, and search for the driver online. If your development board lacks a programming chip, you will need to purchase a programmer.

Next, for other development boards that support Arduino IDE programming, the previous process is similar, but you need to add the board in the board manager, and the software will automatically download the necessary files.

For example, recently Arduino officially supported all ESP32 development boards, as they released a board based on ESP32S3 called Arduino Nano ESP32.

However, there are still many development boards not listed in the board manager, and we need to manually add the download link to enable support for Arduino IDE. Select File -> Preferences -> Click the button next to Additional Board Manager URLs.

Then click to get the list of unofficial board URLs. You will enter a GitHub page that lists most of the boards that support Arduino IDE. Find the model you need, copy the URL ending with json into the box, and then you can find the board in the board manager for download.

Recently, more and more people are using MicroPython, so I will explain how to use it.

I primarily use Thonny IDE, which supports Raspberry Pi Pico, ESP32, Micro:bit, and CircuitPython.

MicroPython is straightforward; just flash the firmware, and you’re done.

Let’s mainly discuss how to use CircuitPython with ESP32-S2 and ESP32-S3.

CircuitPython has many advantages, such as supporting many libraries and special features, making it an enhanced version of MicroPython. It can also emulate a USB drive like Raspberry Pi Pico and Micro:bit.

To achieve the USB drive emulation, you need to use Adafruit’s TinyUF2 Bootloader.

With this, you can achieve the USB drive emulation.After installing this, install CircuitPython as you would with Raspberry Pi Pico: download the CircuitPython UF2 file and drag it to the USB drive. CircuitPython will be installed easily.

Now, I will demonstrate how to install the TinyUF2 bootloader using the Hezhao ESP32-S3 development board as an example.

First, we enter this project and click on Releases.

Select an ESP32-S3 board model. Note that different boards have different chip configurations; for example, mine has 8MB PSRAM and 16MB Flash.

Theoretically, any board based on ESP32-S3 is similar, but some pin functions may differ. So I directly chose a board with the same configuration, LoLin S3.

Download the ZIP package and use the official tool Flash Download Tool to flash it in, or use CircuitPython’s online flashing tool directly. Note that you should flash the integrated package, which is the largest file. Enter 0x0 next to it.

After connecting the development board to the computer, press the Boot button and then press the Reset button once, then release the Boot button to enter the ESP32 BootLoader mode. In this mode, we can flash the firmware.

After flashing, there will be no response. You need to press the Reset button on the development board to restart it, then open the file explorer to see a new disk.

At this point, we can flash the CircuitPython firmware. Just drag the downloaded UF2 file to the disk and wait for the upload to complete. Sometimes an upload error may occur, but it may have already been uploaded. Close the window, and you will find that the drive letter has changed to CIRCUITPY.

Open Thonny, select the port, and you can start programming. If it doesn’t recognize, you can press the Stop button to refresh and try again.

Here’s a summary of the key points:

How to enter the ESP32 Bootloader mode:

After connecting to the computer, press the Boot button, then press the Reset button once, and release the Boot button.

After flashing, press Reset to restart to see the drive letter.

If you want to update the firmware, you can quickly press Reset and then quickly press the Boot button to enter TinyUF2 Bootloader mode, then drag the new version of the UF2 firmware file into the disk to complete the upgrade.

Alright, due to time constraints, I will stop here. I originally planned to discuss issues related to Raspberry Pi and other development boards, but we will discuss that next time. See you in the next issue!

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Recently, we launched a development board selection website. Although it is not yet perfect, we have already recorded around 400 development boards. If you are interested or have any needs, you can check out our selection website. If you have any good suggestions, feel free to mention them in the group or leave us a message.

The domain name of our website is: findboard.cn

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