Flashing NodeMCU Firmware on ESP Board

NodeMCU is popular firmware for ESP8266 WiFi SoC. When you buy a NodeMCU ESP8266 board, it must have been flashed with the firmware. But, you can also flash it anytime by yourself, for example when you want custom NodeMCU firmware. For complete documentation of NodeMCU, you can see it here. There are a few steps to flash your board firmware. In this example, I use NodeMCU DevKit 1.0 with ESP-12E core which is easy to get in the market. If you use ESP-01, you need to see my other post about the ESP-01 flashing circuit.

1. Build the firmware. The easiest way is to build from the cloud, just follow the steps then the firmware will be sent to your email.

2. Install esptool.py. It is a python application to communicate with the ESP ROM bootloader. You can install it either from python package manager using pip install esptool or download manually from Github repository here.

$ git clone https://github.com/espressif/esptool.git

There are several other tools that you can use to flash the firmware, for example, NodeMCU PyFlasher with GUI which is also based on esptool.py.

3. Erase existing flash using esptool.py. In this example, my bord is connected to port /dev/ttyUSB0 with baud rate 9600.

$ ./esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 9600 erase_flash

4. Then, you can run esptool.py again to flash the firmware into your ESP board.

$ ./esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 9600 write_flash --flash_mode dio 0x00000 ../nodemcu-firmware/nodemcu-1.5.4.1-final-7-modules-2017-07-27-06-58-00-float.bin

The flash_mode is dio because the board flash memory size is greater than or equal to 4MB. If you use a board with a smaller memory size such as 512kB or 1MB like in ESP-01, the mode should be qio.

5. After the fourth step, your ESP board still cannot be programmed because the board needs SDK init data. All data in flash memory had been erased through the third step. The SDK init data is required to make firmware boot correctly and saved in the fourth sector from the end of flash memory. If you try to upload a certain Lua program file using nodemcu-tool it will always show an error message as follows.
[NodeMCU-Tool] Unable to establish a connection - Timeout, no response detected - is NodeMCU online and the Lua interpreter ready?
So, the next step is to download SDK init data from this repository. You can clone it and find the binary file in bin directory.

6. Upload the SDK init data to the correct address based on your board flash memory size. As I use NodeMCU DevKit 1.0 with 4MB of flash memory, the location is at 0x3fc000. If you use ESP-01 with 1MB of flash memory, it's at 0xfc000. You can see full information about SDK init data here. The process is the same as flashing the firmware.

./esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 9600 write_flash --flash_mode dio 0x3fc000 ../ESP8266_NONOS_SDK-2.1.0/bin/esp_init_data_default.bin

7. Now, you can try to run certain commands using any NodeMCU tool like nodemcu-tool. From my experience, after flashing the firmware, I need to redo certain commands a few times before it can work properly. For example, I run the following command four times before it can connect with the device.

$ nodemcu-tool mkfs --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 9600
[NodeMCU-Tool] Do you really want to format the filesystem and delete all file ? (no) yes
[NodeMCU-Tool] Connected
[NodeMCU] Version: 2.1.0 | ChipID: 0x3bb3a4 | FlashID: 0x1640c8
[NodeMCU] Formatting the file system...this will take around ~30s
[NodeMCU] File System created | format done.

8. Done. Now, you can upload the program to your board. I prefer to use ESPlorer with GUI rather than nodemcu-tool.

ESP8266 WiFi NodeMCU

Comments

Rangkaian Sensor Infrared dengan Photo Dioda

Keunggulan photodioda dibandingkan LDR adalah photodioda lebih tidak rentan terhadap noise karena hanya menerima sinar infrared, sedangkan LDR menerima seluruh cahaya yang ada termasuk infrared. Rangkaian yang akan kita gunakan adalah seperti gambar di bawah ini. Pada saat intensitas Infrared yang diterima Photodiode besar maka tahanan Photodiode menjadi kecil, sedangkan jika intensitas Infrared yang diterima Photodiode kecil maka tahanan yang dimiliki photodiode besar. Jika tahanan photodiode kecil maka tegangan V- akan kecil . Misal tahanan photodiode mengecil menjadi 10kOhm. Maka dengan teorema pembagi tegangan: V- = Rrx/(Rrx + R2) x Vcc V- = 10 / (10+10) x Vcc V- = (1/2) x 5 Volt V- = 2.5 Volt Sedangkan jika tahanan photodiode besar maka tegangan V- akan besar (mendekati nilai Vcc). Misal tahanan photodiode menjadi 150kOhm. Maka dengan teorema pembagi tegangan: V- = Rrx/(Rrx + R2) x Vcc V- = 150 / (150+10) x Vcc V- = (150/160) x 5

Setting Up Next.js Project With ESLint, Typescript, and AirBnB Configuration

If we initiate a Next.js project using the create-next-app tool, our project will be included with ESLint configuration that we can apply using yarn run lint . By default, the tool installs eslint-config-next and extends next/core-web-vitals in the ESLint configuration. The Next.js configuration has been integrated with linting rules for React and several other libraries and tools. yarn create next-app --typescript For additional configuration such as AirBnB, it is also possible. First, we need to install the peer dependencies of eslint-config-airbnb . We also add support for Typescript using eslint-config-airbnb-typescript . yarn add --dev eslint-config-airbnb eslint-plugin-import eslint-plugin-jsx-a11y eslint-plugin-react eslint-plugin-react-hooks yarn add --dev eslint-config-airbnb-typescript @typescript-eslint/eslint-plugin @typescript-eslint/parser After that, we can update the .eslintrc.json file for the new configuration. { "extends": [ "airb

Configuring Swap Memory on Ubuntu Using Ansible

If we maintain a Linux machine with a low memory capacity while we are required to run an application with high memory consumption, enabling swap memory is an option. Ansible can be utilized as a helper tool to automate the creation of swap memory. A swap file can be allocated in the available storage of the machine. The swap file then can be assigned as a swap memory. Firstly, we should prepare the inventory file. The following snippet is an example, you must provide your own configuration. [server] 192.168.1.2 [server:vars] ansible_user=root ansible_ssh_private_key_file=~/.ssh/id_rsa Secondly, we need to prepare the task file that contains not only the tasks but also some variables and connection information. For instance, we set /swapfile as the name of our swap file. We also set the swap memory size to 2GB and the swappiness level to 60. - hosts: server become: true vars: swap_vars: size: 2G swappiness: 60 For simplicity, we only check the exi

Managing MongoDB Records Using NestJS and Mongoose

NestJS is a framework for developing Node.js-based applications. It provides an additional abstraction layer on top of Express or other HTTP handlers and gives developers a stable foundation to build applications with structured procedures. Meanwhile, Mongoose is a schema modeling helper based on Node.js for MongoDB. There are several main steps to be performed for allowing our program to handle MongoDB records. First, we need to add the dependencies which are @nestjs/mongoose , mongoose , and @types/mongoose . Then, we need to define the connection configuration on the application module decorator. import { MongooseModule } from '@nestjs/mongoose'; @Module({ imports: [ MongooseModule.forRoot('mongodb://localhost:27017/mydb'), ], controllers: [AppController], providers: [AppService], }) Next, we create the schema definition using helpers provided by NestJS and Mongoose. The following snippet is an example with a declaration of index setting and an o

Enabling Single Webcam for Multiple Applications Access in Linux

A webcam can not be accessed by two or more applications simultaneously. The solution is you can duplicate the video stream and make it available for any application. In short, you create a virtual webcam. First, a webcam is commonly detected on /dev/video* . Before you go through the steps to duplicate video stream, you should check whether your webcam is working. You can try to capture video using VLC by this command. (For example, your webcam is on /dev/video0 ) $ vlc v4l2:///dev/video0 If it doesn't work, you can try to change its mode to 0777 and make sure there are no other applications accessing it. If it still doesn't work, you can buy a new webcam. Seriously. Don't buy a cheap and unknown-brand webcam. I have $5 webcam and it had wasted my time. $ apt-get install ffmpeg linux-generic v4l2loopback-dkms FFmpeg is the main application that will access your webcam and duplicate its video stream. V4L2loopback is needed to create multiple virtual capture devic

Configure Gitlab SMTP Setting

Gitlab CE or EE is shipped with the capability to send messages through SMTP service as the basic feature to send notifications or updates to the users. The configuration parameters are available in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb . Each SMTP service provider has a different configuration, therefore the Gitlab configuration parameters should be adjusted according to the requirements. Some examples have been provided by Gitlab here . This is an example if you use the Zoho service. gitlab_rails['smtp_enable'] = true gitlab_rails['smtp_address'] = "smtp.zoho.com" gitlab_rails['smtp_port'] = 587 gitlab_rails['smtp_authentication'] = "plain" gitlab_rails['smtp_enable_starttls_auto'] = true gitlab_rails['smtp_user_name'] = "gitlab@mydomain.com" gitlab_rails['smtp_password'] = "mypassword" gitlab_rails['smtp_domain'] = "smtp.zoho.com" This is another example of using Amazon SES w

LUKI NOTES

Search This Blog