Introduction

The ESP-IDF (Espressif IoT Development Framework) is a

Prerequisites

Before we begin ensure that you have the following prerequisites:

• A computer running Fedora 39.
• Access to the internet.
• A basic familiarity with using the Linux command line interface (CLI).
• An ESP32 development board to test our setup.

Step 1: Install Required Dependencies:

Open a terminal window and execute the following command to install the dependencies required for building ESP-IDF projects:

sudo dnf -y update && sudo dnf install git wget flex bison gperf python3 python3-pip python3-setuptools cmake ninja-build ccache dfu-util libusbx

Step 2: Download ESP-IDF:

Next, we’ll download the ESP-IDF git repository. We’ll start by going to the GitHub repository, as there are several releases to choose from.

Once we get to the the github page we can see the available releases by clicking on the tags link. For this example we will be using the v5.1.3 release. Once you click on the tag we will find instructions for cloning the release.

mkdir -p ~/development/SDKs/esp/
cd ~/development/SDKs/esp/
git clone -b v5.1.3 --recursive https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf.git esp-idf-v5.1.3
cd esp-idf-v5.1.3/

Now that we’ve cloned the repository we need to install tools. The tools are dependent on the board we will be developing on. We can install tools for specific boards or all boards supported by this version of the esp-idf. For ease and simplicity we wlll install the tools for all supported boards.

./install.sh all

Step 3: Set Up Environment Variables:

Now that we have the dependencies, ESP-IDF, and the tools installed we can started developing. In order to build and flash our binaries we need our environment variables setup properly. Luckily ESP-IDF has a script for that. We need to be in the ESP-IDF directory to source the script.

. ./export.sh

We can verify that everything so far is working by running the idf.py script. If we have the environment setup correctly it should be in our path so we can run it from anywhere.

idf.py --version

If everything went well we should see something like the following:

Step 4: Configure udev

When working with ESP32 boards and similar hardware, configuring udev becomes essential. The udev rules ensure that the systems recognizes the connected devices correctly and grant the necessary permission to flash and monitor your development board. For more information about configuring udev read my article, “Configuring udev for development devices” to learn more.

Step 5: Building Our First Project:

For a quick test of your setup we will copy one of the examples included with ESP-IDF.

cd ~/development/
cp -rf $IDF_PATH/examples/get-started/hello_world/ .

Once we have our project we need to set the target and build it. With ESP-IDF v5.1.3 we have several targets available:

Usage: idf.py set-target [OPTIONS] {esp32|esp32s2|esp32c3|esp32s3|esp32c2|esp32c6|esp32h2|linux}

I will be using an ESP32S2 Saolo board. I’ll set the appropriate target and then build.

cd hello_world
idf.py set-target esp32s2
idf.py build

Step 6: Flash and Monitor:

We will flash and monitor our newly built application using the UART bridge on the ESP32S2 Saolo board. The idf.py script will try to automatically connect to your esp32 board. If you have more than one UART bridge connected to your development machine you can specify which one use the “-p” option for idf.py.

idf.py -p /dev/ttyUSB0 flash
idf.py -p /dev/ttyUSB0 monitor

Alternatively you can issue both commands with on the same command line.

idf.py -p /dev/ttyUSB0 flash monitor

When you’re done monitoring the serial output you can exit by pressing “CTRL + ]”