Pre-requisites

ESP-IDF SDK

The ESP-IDF is the SDK, provided by Expressif, for programming the ESP32 with C and C++.

Install (on Arch):

yay -Sy esp-idf

User permissions

Ensure you are a member of the uucp group, to enable access to serial ports:

usermod -a -G uucp $USER

Check ESP32 serial connection

List USB devices

lsusb

You should see the ESP32 listed and named something like Silicon Labs CP210x - this is the USB-to-serial chip on the ESP32 board.

Can also run:

ls /dev/ttyUSB*

Which should reveal:

crw-rw---- 1 root uucp 188, 0 Dec 15 17:57 /dev/ttyUSB0

Initialise ESP-IDF local environment in terminal

cd into sub-project and run

. /opt/esp-idf/export.sh

This gives you access to the ESP-IDF Python CLI.

Then initialise the project:

idf.py set-target esp32

Compile program

idf.py build

Flash to device

idf.py flash

Monitor program execution

idf.py -p /dev/ttyUSB0 monitor

Clean the build cache

idf.py fullclean