add post about ESP32 issues

2025-08-23 12:12:20 +00:00 · 2025-07-20 03:17:22 +02:00
parent f5353dd193
commit 2b54cecdab
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--- a/content/post/2025-micropython-esp32.md
+++ b/content/post/2025-micropython-esp32.md
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+---
+title: "Installing Micropython on the Super Mini ESP32-S3"
+description: 
+date: 2025-07-20T02:30:43+02:00
+image: 
+math: 
+license: 
+hidden: false
+comments: true
+draft: false
+---
+
+## Context
+
+Many years ago I bought a "bargain" bluetooth scale.
+I wanted a way to automatically log my weight, and the Xiaomi equivalent was more than twice as expensive at the time.
+The problem is that it came with a very basic and somewhat sketchy software that required signing up, and none of the typical apps (openscale, gadgetbridge...) supported it.
+I looked at how to reverse engineer it, but I did not have much time back then, and I wrote it off as a "future project".
+Luckily, it had a screen, so I've been using it as a regular scale.
+I did not even bother to check the body composition metrics, because I got a very depressing reading of 35% body fat.
+
+Flash forward to today, when I decided to finally work on it.
+In addition to trying nrfConnect, I installed the app to see the actual values..
+It turns out the composition data was completely off!!
+When a reading starts, the app needs to tell the scale some basic data about you (age, height, sex).
+Unfortunately, there is no way (that I know of) to set a default user, so when the phone is not connected, it goes back to the wildly inaccurate reading.
+
+So, I decided to connect one of my idle ESP32 boards to it, to interface with the scale through bluetooth (sending the right user data) and logging the results somewhere through WiFi.
+
+## The problem
+
+Installing the firmware was not too difficult, after I got the board to properly register.
+
+```
+❯ uv tool run esptool.py --port /dev/ttyACM4 erase-flash
+...
+Chip type:          ESP32-S3 (QFN56) (revision v0.2)
+Features:           Wi-Fi, BT 5 (LE), Dual Core + LP Core, 240MHz, Embedded Flash 4MB (XMC), Embedded PSRAM 2MB (AP_3v3)
+...
+❯ uv tool run esptool.py --port /dev/ttyACM4 --baud 460800 write_flash 0 ESP32_GENERIC_S3-20250415-v1.25.0.bin
+```
+
+But then, I kept getting this error on boot: `OSError: (-24579, 'ESP_ERR_FLASH_NOT_INITIALISED')`.
+And I could not copy any files or install any packages.
+
+After some research, I narrowed the possibilities to:
+
+* A wrong partition table, most likely due to the fact that my board only has 4MB of flash.
+* Using an unsupported type of PSRAM (less likely)
+
+## The solution
+
+At this point, I could either try to compile the firmware with a custom partition (kind of tedious), or I could use the wonderful [mp-image-tool-esp32](https://github.com/glenn20/mp-image-tool-esp32) tool to check existing firmwares and modify partition sizes.
+
+I confirmed my suspicion:
+
+```
+❯ uv tool run mp-image-tool-esp32  ~/Downloads/ESP32_GENERIC_S3-20250415-v1.25.0.bin 
+Running mp-image-tool-esp32 v0.1.1 (Python 3.12.11).                                                                                                                         
+Opening /home/j/Downloads/ESP32_GENERIC_S3-20250415-v1.25.0.bin...                                                                                                
+Found esp32s3 firmware file (8MB flash).                                                                                                                                     
+                        Partition table (flash size: 8MB):                        
+╭──────────┬──────┬─────────┬──────────┬──────────┬──────────┬───────┬───────────╮
+│ Name     │ Type │ SubType │   Offset │     Size │      End │ Flags │           │
+├──────────┼──────┼─────────┼──────────┼──────────┼──────────┼───────┼───────────┤
+│ nvs      │ data │ nvs     │   0x9000 │   0x6000 │   0xf000 │   0x0 │ (24.0 kB) │
+│ phy_init │ data │ phy     │   0xf000 │   0x1000 │  0x10000 │   0x0 │  (4.0 kB) │
+│ factory  │ app  │ factory │  0x10000 │ 0x1f0000 │ 0x200000 │   0x0 │  (1.9 MB) │
+│ vfs      │ data │ fat     │ 0x200000 │ 0x600000 │ 0x800000 │   0x0 │  (6.0 MB) │
+╰──────────┴──────┴─────────┴──────────┴──────────┴──────────┴───────┴───────────╯
+Micropython app fills 79.3% of factory partition (410 kB free)
+```
+
+
+```
+❯ uv tool run mp-image-tool-esp32 -f 4MB --resize vfs=2MB ESP32_GENERIC_S3-20250415-v1.25.0.bin
+❯ uv tool run esptool.py --port /dev/ttyACM4 --baud 460800 write_flash 0 ESP32_GENERIC_S3-20250415-v1.25.0-4MB-resize=vfs=2097152.bin
+```
+
+After that, I was able to install new packages with `mpremote` and `mip`:
+
+```
+uv tool run mpremote mip install aioble
+```
+
+We can check that we are fully utilizing the 2MB of PSRAM:
+
+```
+❯ uv tool run mpremote exec 'import gc;print(gc.mem_free(), "bytes")'
+2061456 bytes
+```
+
+If you see much less than that, you are probably using the wrong variant (try `SPIRAM_OCT`).