Are any of you able to do the debug using method 2 from "debug guide" on a Nano ESP32 ?
After I upload the sketch the port becomes disconnected. Pressing the [reset] button once again doesn't help.
I'm using Arduino IDE 2.3.2 on Win 10.
Thank you,
@lburelli Do you plan a new IDE release in the next few weeks? I'm asking because it seems almost everyone have issue with the debugging. You have publish a feature that is not working.
It is normal for the port to change after you perform the procedure. The reason is that it changes the USB VID/PID pair of the board.
Check in Arduino IDE's Tools > Port menu. You should see the port there, but it won't be labeled as "(Arduino Nano ESP32)" as usual, but instead as a random other ESP32 board for this reason.
You should select that board, but make sure to leave Tools > Board > Arduino ESP32 Boards > Arduino Nano ESP32 selected instead of switching the board selection to the random board the ESP32 Nano is now identified as.
The breaking changes shipped in Arduino IDE 2.3.0 were the result of an intentional reworking of the Arduino boards platform debugger configuration system to make it more powerful and flexible in order to support the requirements and use cases that emerged as various platforms started to take advantage of the debug feature.
As I mentioned in my previous reply, what is has been done already is to migrate the ESP32 boards platforms to compatibility with Arduino IDE using the new capabilities. So the fix will come in the form of a new release of the boards platforms to which you will update via the Arduino IDE Boards Manager. After that, the platforms will work with the current version of Arduino IDE.
So the answer to your question is: no new release of Arduino IDE is necessary.
People have issues with everything. That is the nature of technical endeavors.
We post about issues on the forum (and elsewhere Internet) when we have them. When everything is working perfectly, there is no reason for us to post about the lack of an issue. So if you look around on the Internet you will get an exaggerated impression of how many people are having issues with a given thing.
If there are specific issues, let's investigate them and either resolve them or make sure they are being formally tracked by the people who can resolve them. I think that will be more productive than talk about vague subjective feelings about the experiences of a nebulous group of users.
I agree. They did add one, but for some reason they put it under the "Method 1" section of the tutorial, which would lead the reader to believe this behavior is specific to "Method 1".
Which version of Arduino IDE were you using when you took this screenshot?
As I have already explained, the current version of the "Arduino ESP32 Boards" platform is not compatible with the debugger of Arduino IDE >=2.3.0. Please use Arduino IDE 2.2.1 until the next release of the "Arduino ESP32 Boards" platform is released.
I'll provide instructions you can follow to install Arduino IDE 2.2.1:
From the list of download links under the "Assets" section of the page, click the link with the name:
If you want the installer package: arduino-ide_2.2.1_Windows_64bit.exe
If you want the "MSI" package: arduino-ide_2.2.1_Windows_64bit.msi
If you want the "ZIP" package: arduino-ide_2.2.1_Windows_64bit.zip
ⓘ If you aren't sure which one you need, use arduino-ide_2.2.1_Windows_64bit.exe
Wait for the download to finish.
Install Arduino IDE from the downloaded file as you would normally do.
You will now find that Arduino IDE periodically shows an "Update Available" dialog to offer you an update to the newer version of Arduino IDE. You must not accept the update offer until after the next release of the "Arduino ESP32 Boards" platform comes out.
From my point of view I have never seen a company like this with such a lack of respect for the user.
At the beginning of the discussion you stated:
I think that will be more productive than talk about vague subjective feelings about the experiences of a nebulous group of users.
You named people that how buy you products "nebulous group of users": totally disrespectful for the users;
"will be more productive than talk about vague subjective feelings", there is no subjective feelings, just a lack of documentation and a bad product from your (company) side. And, if you allow me, I think it will be more productive for the user if your team do their the job and at least they update the docs.
Honestly, I'm starting being sorry buying your products
No, my statement was not in any way disrespectful. You are evidently set on getting offended as there is no reasonable way to interpret my statement in the way you have.
I am here to share knowledge and to learn about embedded systems. That is the only thing I am here for. You want to make this into something else so I am exiting the conversation now.
This is absolutely a subjective feeling:
The first clue is the "seems". The second clue is the lack of any possibility of your having empirical evidence that "everyone have issue".
It is a reasonable request. Unfortunately I am not involved in the maintenance of the documentation so I can't help with that.
I just want to say that I have always found ptillisch's replies on this forum helpful and respectful.
As in any technical forum you do have to read the replies carefully to get the full benefit of folks with more knowledge than yourself.
Yes, the Arduino company makes mistakes from time to time but they do not try to hide them and they do work to resolve outstanding issues. I don't know much about the company but it seems to me that it is run more like a cooperative of enthusiasts rather than a mega corporation - and I like that.
Frankly, I am amazed at the level of detailed technical support I get for products that cost a few tens of dollars.
If you are disatisfied with level of suport here then try getting help for any similar product that you buy from Aliexpress.
Thanks very much for the clarification - I have been keen to get debugging working with the Nano ESP32 but having no success with the 2.3.x IDE versions. Selecting the latest version did seem to be the best option given that the documentation indicated that there were some major improvements to debugging and that it moved out of the "experimental" phase. I was wondering if you have any idea when the next release of the Arduino ESP32 Boards platform is expected?
Definitely! Even though it has unfortunately resulted in this painful transitional period for the users of ESP32 boards, in the long run this will actually significantly improve the experience for debugging these boards.
I do not. The good news is that the changes to the codebase have already been made, so it is mainly a matter of waiting for the project maintainers to "pull the trigger" on the release.
The "Arduino ESP32 Boards" platform of the Nano ESP32 board is only a fork of the amazing 3rd party "esp32" boards platform. The difference between the two is that "Arduino ESP32 Boards" only contains the Arduino Nano ESP32 board definition in order to make it easier for the users of that board (there are so many boards in the upstream platform that it can be a bit overwhelming for a beginner). So the "Arduino ESP32 Boards" platform would generally follow the releases of the "esp32" platform so that the version numbers of each match equivalent points in the history of the codebase.
For this reason, I believe the current blocker is waiting for the maintainers of the "esp32" platform to make a release. Once that is done, the "Arduino ESP32 Boards" platform maintainers will sync from the upstream repo and make a release of the fork, after which you will see an update notification in Arduino IDE that will allow you to install the new version of the platform as usual.
Thanks again for the detailed and prompt response. I certainly appreciate that it is quite challenging at times to progress development whilst maintaining compatibility between versions of different components - particularly when there are competing priorities and stakeholders.
I did take a little bit of time to find this thread and so I would suggest a quick info section addition to the excellent tutorial on debugging the Nano ESP32 (which I did find very quickly) - https://docs.arduino.cc/tutorials/nano-esp32/debugging/
Under the paragraph "IDE Setup" it would be good to specify that it will be necessary to use version 2.2.1 of the IDE with Arduino ESP32 Boards version 2.0.12 or 2.0.13. This might help to alleviate frustration for users in the interim.
I agree it would be a good idea. I am not in any way involved in the maintenance of Arduino's documentation so unfortunately I can't assist with that. Some of the people who do monitor thsi forum category, but I'm not sure whether they will see this forum thread so you can submit a request via the contact form here if you like:
I see they are using GitHub's "milestones" feature in order to track the tasks they intend to complete before the release. This might give somewhat of an idea of the progress towards a release:
I uninstalled 2.3.2 IDE and installed 2.2.1 as suggested and indeed managed to get the debugger working on the small default sketch which is a minor extension to the standard "Blink" example adding some steps that drive the onboard RGB LED through different colours. I have come across some issues which may be worth documenting for others although I am not sure whether the issues are somehow related to my particular setup or are general.
Side Note: Why this specific sketch is not in the examples for the Nano ESP32 is very odd (at least I haven't found it yet) - seems to be a common problem mentioned by others. I would have thought this should have been at the top of the list. Anyway - more on that later.
I have a relatively sizable application which I would like to be able to debug on the Arduino platform and my efforts to acheive this has led to the following observations. I started with a brand new Nano (purchased from Core Electronics in Australia) and I started with an installation of IDE 2.2.2 then 2.2.3. Using the tutorial referred to previously, I noted the following:
The default sketch ran properly
Was NOT able to use option 2 of the tutorial to get the pulsing green LED. I didn't worry too much about this because option 1 worked to get to ROM boot mode.
Was not able to run the debugger - the serial port changes (in my case from COM8 to COM7)
After reading this post I then un-installed V2.3.2 IDE and installed V2.2.1 as advised. I should also point out at this stage that the highest version of esp32 by Espressif available is 2.0.11. Given the requirement of my application to use LittleFS, I changed the partitioning scheme (to SPIFFS), and burned the bootloader (via menu option on IDE) as suggested in another post. I now observe the following:
The default sketch does NOT work properly - the yellow LED flashes slowly but the RGB LED is blank. [see post #26]
I can now use option 2 to get the pulsing green RGB LED - BUT in this mode the serial port is COM7 and the programmer/debugger won't talk to the board.
I CAN use the debugger for the default sketch - set break points, step through code, examine variables - looks good! BUT .. I can't debug my larger application (once I finally got it to compile!) After uploading (using programmer) and pushing the reset button, I get the pulsing green mode with serial port on COM7.
I am guessing/hoping that the issues I am having relate to stepping back to the IDE 2.2.1/Board 2.0.11 combination. It appears to me like perhaps the bootloader is different and is overriding control of the RGB LED outputs. [NO - my settings were not right for the version of the default sketch I had] It is a little disconcerting when you can't get your board to behave as it did when you first bought it - I do like the devices where you can easily "reset to factory defaults"
Thanks for pointing that out - I am probably best to wait for the release and then try again.
debugger working on the small default sketch which is a minor extension to the standard "Blink" example adding some steps that drive the onboard RGB LED through different colours.
I did a similar thing and found that using the RGB LED in an application seemed to break its use to do the two reset button presses to get the pulsing green ready to upload LED. There is probably a way around this but I decided to leave the RGB LED alone.
Yes - I did. The process described there is basically the process used to program the device in preparation for debugging. ie "Upload using programming" from the "ROM Boot Mode". Looking at the output from that process, it can be seen that five partitions in Flash are erased and then programmed. One of these will be the bootloader hence my suggestion that the bootloader code appears to have changed from 2.2.1/2.0.11 to 2.3.2/2.0.13.
A pity because the RGB LED is a very useful visual output for applications to use - I like the potential for direct visual output options like this without having to look for LEDs, resistors and wires to hang off available pins
Oh - good point. The situation gets more and more complex. Turns out that I have 2.0.11 of esp and 2.0.13 of Arduino ESP32 - I have only just noticed these 2 are different versions! Thanks - I will try that to see if it makes any difference. Given that I am only presented with the options of 2.0.10 and 2.0.11 for esp and I can download 2.0.14 from GitHub, whether it would be worth re-installing IDE 2.3.2 and manually installing 2.0.14 of esp (from memory 2.0.13 was the lastest one possible through IDE interface) but I probably have more productive ways to spend my time
Thanks - I will try that to see if it makes any difference. Given that I am only presented with the options of 2.0.10 and 2.0.11 for esp and I can download 2.0.14 from GitHub, whether it would be worth re-installing IDE 2.3.2 and manually installing 2.0.14 of esp (from memory 2.0.13 was the lastest one possible through IDE interface) but I probably have more productive ways to spend my time 