ESPRESSIF ESP32-JCI-R Development Boards User Manual

ESPRESSIF ESP32-JCI-R Development Boards

About This Guide

This document is intended to help users set up the basic software development environment for developing applications using hardware based on the ESP32-JCI-R module.

Release Notes

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Certification

Download certificates for Espressif products from www.espressif.com/en/certificates.

Introduction

ESP32-JCI-R

ESP32-JCI-R is a powerful, generic Wi-Fi+BT+BLE MCU module that targets a wide variety of applications, ranging from low-power sensor networks to the most demanding tasks, such as voice encoding, music streaming and MP3 decoding. At the core of this module is the ESP32-D0WD-V3 chip. The chip embedded is designed to be scalable and adaptive. There are two CPU cores that can be individually controlled, and the CPU clock frequency is adjustable from 80 MHz to 240 MHz. The user may also power off the CPU and make use of the low-power co-processor to constantly monitor the peripherals for changes or crossing of thresholds. ESP32 integrates a rich set of peripherals, ranging from capacitive touch sensors, Hall sensors, SD card interface, Ethernet, high- speed SPI,UART, I2S and I2C. The integration of Bluetooth, Bluetooth LE and Wi-Fi ensures that a wide range of applications can be targeted and that the module is future-proof: using Wi-Fi allows a large physical range and direct connection to the internet through a Wi-Fi router while using Bluetooth allows the user to conveniently connect to the phone or broadcast low energy beacons for its detection. The sleep current of the ESP32 chip is less than 5 μA, making it suitable for battery-powered and wearable electronics applications. ESP32 supports a data rate of up to 150 Mbps, and 20 dBm output power at the antenna to ensure the widest physical range. As such the chip does offer industry-leading specifications and the best performance for electronic integration, range, power consumption, and connectivity. The operating system chosen for ESP32 is freeRTOS with LwIP; TLS 1.2 with hardware acceleration is built-in as well. Secure (encrypted) over-the-air (OTA) upgrade is also supported so that developers can continually upgrade their products even after their release.

ESP-IDF

The Espressif IoT Development Framework (ESP-IDF for short) is a framework for developing applications based on the Espressif ESP32. Users can develop applications in Windows/Linux/MacOS based on ESP-IDF.

Preparation

To develop applications for ESP32-JCI-R you need:

• PC loaded with either Windows, Linux or Mac operating system
• Toolchain to build the Application for ESP32
• ESP-IDF essentially contains API for ESP32 and scripts to operate the toolchain
• A text editor to write programs (Projects) in C, e.g., Eclipse
• The ESP32 board itself and a USB cable to connect it to the PC

Get Started

Toolchain Setup

The quickest way to start development with ESP32 is by installing a prebuilt toolchain. Pick up your OS below and follow provided instructions.

• Windows
• Linux
• Mac OS

Note:
We are using ~/esp directory to install the prebuilt toolchain, ESP-IDF and sample applications. You can use a different directory, but need to adjust respective commands. Depending on your experience and preferences, instead of using a prebuilt toolchain, you may want to customize your environment. To set up the system your own way go to the section Customized Setup of Toolchain.
Once you are done with setting up the toolchain then go to section Get ESP- IDF.

Get ESP-IDF

Besides the toolchain (that contains programs to compile and build the application), you also need ESP32 specific API / libraries. They are provided by Espressif in the ESP-IDF repository.
To get it, open the terminal, navigate to the directory you want to put ESP- IDF, and clone it using the git clone command:

• cd ~/esp
• git clone –recursive https://github.com/espressif/esp-idf.git 

ESP-IDF will be downloaded into ~/esp/esp-idf.

Note:
Do not miss the –recursive option. If you have already cloned ESP-IDF without this option, run another command to get all the submodules:

• cd ~/esp/esp-idf
• git submodule update –init

Set up Path to ESP-IDF

The toolchain programs access ESP-IDF using the IDF_PATH environment variable. This variable should be set up on your PC, otherwise, projects will not build. The setting may be done manually, each time PC is restarted. Another option is to set up it permanently by defining IDF_PATH in the user profile. To do so, follow the instructions in Add IDF_PATH to User Profile.

Start a Project

Now you are ready to prepare your application for ESP32. To start off quickly, we will use the hello_world project from the examples directory in IDF.
Copy get-started/hello_world to ~/esp directory:

• cd ~/esp
• cp -r $IDF_PATH/examples/get-started/hello_world .

You can also find a range of example projects under the examples directory in ESP-IDF. These example project directories can be copied in the same way as presented above, to begin your own projects.

Note:
The ESP-IDF build system does not support spaces in paths to ESP-IDF or to projects.

Connect

You are almost there. To be able to proceed further, connect the ESP32 board to the PC, check under what serial port the board is visible and verify if serial communication works. If you are not sure how to do it, check the instructions in Establish Serial Connection with ESP32. Note the port number, as it will be required in the next step.

Configure

Being in a terminal window, go to the directory of the hello_world application by typing cd ~/esp/hello_world. Then start project configuration utility menuconfig:

• cd ~/esp/hello_world make menuconfig

If previous steps have been done correctly, the following menu will be displayed:

In the menu, navigate to Serial flasher config > Default serial port to configure the serial port, where the project will be loaded to. Confirm selection by pressing enter, save
configuration by selecting , and then exit the application by selecting