esptool | Espressif SoC serial bootloader utility

I found the problem. The conda install fixed the GDAL problem. BUT. When installing requirements.txt, GDAL got installed a second time and this caused the error, since the normal pip install is not working properly with GDAL.

It's more likely that you are experiencing hardware related issues than software related issues as you imply yourself.

Re-solder the part that broke off and try again. You probably broke of a resistor/capacitor that is used for noise filtering the output (I am not a hardware guy) or something that is vital to regulating the voltage required for the board to operate.

EDIT

As indicated by: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hallard/NodeMCU-Gateway/master/pictures/NodeMCU-Lora-Gateway-top.png it seems, albeit that board is of a different design, that you broke off a capacitor or diode. Either resolder or get yourself a new one (100nf) or a diode (1N4148)

I think it has nothing to do with flash memory size from the comments you provided.

If your setup on Arduino IDE is Generic ESP8266 Module and it is working, it means that the LED_BUILTIN is configured at GPIO1 as shown in the source code of ESP8266 core for Arduino.

This means that you had an EPS-01 instead of an ESP-01S. One of the differences between ESP-01 and ESP-01S is that the LED_BUILTIN is wired to the different GPIO pin. ESP-01 has the LED_BUILTIN wired to GPIO1, while ESP-01S has the LED_BUILTIN wired to GPIO2.

This picture shows the different between ESP-01 and ESP-01S, visually ESP-01 has 2 LEDs on board near the antenna, while ESP-01S have two extra resistor between header pins and ESP8266EX chip, and with only one LED near the antenna.

Easier way to fix it

The easier way to address it is to define your own pin assignment instead of using pre-defined LED_BUILTIN.

The problem was that my last apt upgrade updated the kernel from the 5.4.0-86-generic to 5.4.0-88-generic (I checked the update in /var/log/apt/history.log.1.gz). The driver CH341 in 5.4.0-88 is not working properly (the ESP I'm using require CH340G drivers). The solution is to go back to the 5.4.0-86 drivers and in the following I list what I've done.

1. disconnect any ESP or board connected to any USB. Then test that the CH341 module (which allows the serial communication with the EPS) is loaded. You can use this code to test the correct unload/load of the module in steps 2, 3.

Useful to solve the problem. I'm in the proces of learning to use the ESP32 wifi, read your message checked, the ESP-idf and esp-32 technical manual not much info there I found this URI https://www.wi-fi.org/downloads-public/Wi-Fi_Protected_Setup_Best_Practices_v2.0.2.pdf/8188

Kind regards

Update: check the sdkconfig file in your projectmap against the one in the example map for wifi config settings.

Could you give more details about the 3.3V regulator that you using? Do you have it connected between the serial signals?

If that is the case, I suggest this connection instead:

3.3V signal voltage divisor

ESP TX and Arduino RX can be connected directly without any issue

Most often provisioning fails because of drivers that aren't updated.

For macOS these would be (latest version):

• https://www.silabs.com/developers/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-drivers
• https://ftdichip.com/drivers/vcp-drivers/

According to your update you already installed those.

Some devices also need lower baud rates. For example the LILYGO TTGO T-Wristband only works with limited bandwidths. Maybe try with a lower value (as low as 9600).

Since the macOS USB hardware is known to be a bit finicky you could also try to put the devkit behind a USB hub (with an external power supply).

Finally, there are some devices that are known to have a bad hardware setup and which are difficult to flash on macOS. Sometimes pulling the GPIO0 to ground (for example with a resistor) can make the flashing work.

Others have reported success with adding a capacitor: https://randomnerdtutorials.com/solved-failed-to-connect-to-esp32-timed-out-waiting-for-packet-header/

Since you only need to provision/flash a device once, the breadboard solution would be enough. Concretely, adding a 10uF electrolytic capacitor between the EN pin and GND could work.

You haven't provided much details on your implementation, but if assuming the standard ESP-IDF implementation then the WiFi credentials are stored in Flash on the default NVS partition named "nvs" (overview). You can easily perform an erase cycle on the entire partition which will erase everything stored in your device.

Alternatively you can hunt down the specific NVS keys used by the ESP WiFi component to store the credentials and erase only those. This is slightly risky as they haven't open-sourced the WiFi drivers and might change the implementation at any time. With that in mind, current ESP IDF 4.2 seems to store those keys in the default NVS partition under namespace "nvs.net80211". The relevant key names would appear to be "sta.authmode", "sta.ssid" and "sta.pswd".

In software development, a stub is a piece of code or a program which is used in place of another. They often simulate the behavior of the original feature and sometimes they are used as a temporaro substitute for undeveloped code.

In the case of esptool, it uses a stub loader, which basically replaces the original bootloader used in the ESP to load your program via serial port to the ROM of your ESP32 device.

Basically this stub bootloader has the same behavior as the original bootloader, but it uses some UART routines which are more heavily optimised to load the ROM code.

Using --no-stub you will be using the original ESP32 bootloader, which is known to be slower at flashing the program and at some other operations. There are some commands which can only be used in the esptool bootloader, but if you are not using any optional commands to boot your code, it is safe to use --no-stub