ESP32: IDF-5.1 recommended version?

[mnfisher]

Any joy with the upgrade / re-install?

I see the new esp32 p4 advertised today and several articles in Elektor...

Martin

[chipfryer27]

Hi

I've been a bit busy the last couple of days with little desire to go to the ice-cave that presently the Evil Lab resembles. Today I'm travelling the length and breadth of the country so if not too late on my return I may call in. Funnily enough I will be passing by two of our three Ikeas, so as there is a forecast of "hungry with a chance of meatballs" for both mid morning and late afternoon, maybe an air filter should be on my list too.

Out of curiosity, which laser cutter are you using?

A friend is toying with the idea of one and quite likes the look of the Creality (I think) as it had good reviews and a 40W output. As it will without question end up in the Evil Lab shortly after he gets bored with it I'm keen for him to buy it too <s> I was recently toying with obtaining another CNC and quite liked the look of FoxAlien which also has a 20W laser attachment. However the inevitable question of what would I use it for still remains largely unanswered.

Regards

[mnfisher]

Man or Superman? Ice caves aren't as common as they used to be?

I got a basic Atomstack A5 a few years ago - didn't have a use but it was cheap in the local classifieds.. Hardly used since - but I wanted some snowflakes for a charity competition we are running, and it seemed like it's time had arrived.

It only has a 10w laser - cutting card is fine, but plywood is painfully slow. Go for 40w given the choice... (it will engrave okay though). It would need a powerful extractor - an enclosed device would be better.
On the plus side Lightburn is excellent and easy to use.

Enjoy the meatballs

Martin

[kersing]

For a laser cutter, check the output power is 40W, many simply list the power which is the total power consumed and output power of the laser is a fraction. There are solid state 40W output lasers these days, preferable over the CO2 units.
And always use an enclosed laser to protect your eyes. Especially with lasers that powerful.

[chipfryer27]

Hi

Totally agree with you on the safety front and I'd never trust any goggles that were supplied. Far too easy for accidents to happen. Extraction and fire extinguisher are two other musts. Decent air-assist at higher powers should also be considered alongside a honeycomb.

There is a lot of confusion regarding power as you say, with many quoting consumption over output in a deliberate attempt (in my opinion) to sound better than reality. The FoxAlien has videos showing capabilities and also explained how they achieved 20W using solid state.They took four lasers and arranged them through what I presume are optical circulators of sorts to provide a combined output of 20W optical. When my friend mentioned the 40W he was looking at I too was a bit sceptical until in their video they showed eight lasers being combined. At these powers stainless steel becomes a target option as you can colour it. One video has a rather cool stainless steel meat cleaver with a Union Jack "burned" into it. No matter how much you scrub, that isn't washing off

My CNC came with a laser module, 2500mW but no idea if that is input or output, suspect former and it came with LaseGBRL the optical equivalent of Candle. Lightburn does seem to be the software of choice by most though. I did think of trying to use it to "silkscreen" my PCBs but haven't yet got around to it,

It's too near Christmas to talk of these as I now have the desire....... Maybe Santa will bring me one but if not I'd be really happy with a FC Pico-W component

Regards
PS
I couldn't afford a whole tropical volcanic island as an HQ but I did get a cave quite close to the bus route in New Providence....

[chipfryer27]

Hi

Awake at 4am this morning I decided to try my W8.1 machine again. To briefly recap. previously I had no issue at all with esp v4.2 or 4.4 but after attempting to upgrade to 5.1 everything broke. Attempting clean installs of 4.2 now inform that my OS is too old (it didn't previously) and installation would fail. The only install that would complete was 4.1 but this too failed to compile citing numerous issues.

Uninstalled everything related to esp / git / python and deleted all folders I could find. CCleaned registry and restarted. Followed guide but selected 4.x however these wouldn't install citing the OS issues and informed to download an offline installer instead.

Going to the esp website I found a 4.1.2 offline installer which did run successfully. This installed Python 3.8 and Git 2.34 as part of the process and did not give the option to select any other versions. Note that when using the guide and attempting 4.x from there, although a newer version of idf was being installed it did offer to install Python 3.7, an older version of Python than the older idf would install..... Reinforces my belief that esp have changed things.

I then had to fiddle with PATH settings as Python now appears within the esp directories instead of by itself, same with Git, and now I am only one step backwards from when I started this sorry affair. Now running 4.1 instead of 4.higher I can compile again.

"If it ain't broke don't fix it" seems fitting if running pre W10.

I still have some spare hot needles for my eyes so once I get bored with them I will attempt to fix my W10 install.

Regards

[chipfryer27]

Hi

At one of my W10 machines. It seems I did install esp onto this ages ago but really can't remember when.

Running
ESP-IDF v5.1.1
Git v2.42
Python v3.11

The Python and Git were most likely already installed when I did the esp.

Seems to compile a basic flash test just fine using a Lolin32-Lite. Just need to get the other W10 going now.

Regards

[chipfryer27]

Hi

In Evil Lab I had issues upgrading from the "experimental" 5.0 to recommended 5.1 on a W10 machine.

This morning I uninstalled Git, Python and the esp-idf, deleted all folders and ran registry ccleaner.

Followed the instructions given but this failed during install, attempting to fetch components. This appears to be attributed to timeouts when trying to fetch components, possibly the latency associated with cellular networks is contriibuting as the Evil Lab only has cellular connectivity.

I then downloaded an offline idf installer which has everything embedded. However as mentioned in a previous post this does not allow you to choose versions of Git / Python.

This installed successfully but as before I had to edit PATHs (Settings > System > About > Advanced System Settings > Environment Variables > editing System Path variables to suit Git / Python).

Once edited and restarted it then allowed me to compile to Hex a basic flash test for a Lolin32-Lite. I haven't yet tried compiling to chip on any of my machines after "fixing" them, but I'm hopeful.

This machine now runs

ESP v5.1.2
Python v3.11
Git v2.39.2

Note that you won't find Git or Python in start menu or in "C:\ "etc as it is embedded within esp. You will instead find them in your esp folder.

Regards

[LeighM]

Followed the instructions given but this failed during install, attempting to fetch components. This appears to be attributed to timeouts when trying to fetch components, possibly the latency associated with cellular networks is contriibuting as the Evil Lab only has cellular connectivity.

That's an interesting observation, as I had similar thoughts, having same issue updating to 5.1 on a PC I've just brought back to life (with the help of a cheap graphics card from eBay I too am on cellular for broadband (5G router from Three), single large files are fine and so are git, curl etc. But ESP install was giving lots of size mismatch errors.
The offline installer failed for me too, as it seemed to want to do downloads too, perhaps I should have deleted everything first.
My attention span is quite short these days, so I gave up and did something more useful instead.
I'll get back to it again when I'm in the mood for wasting more time and hopefully learn something

[chipfryer27]

Hi

I'm only on 4G and when downloading the offline installer it took a few attempts. After uninstalling everything and cleaning registry I then deleted everything related in

C\
C:\Program Files
C:\Program Files (x86)
C:\Program Data (hidden)
C:\Users\user\AppData (hidden)

It does suck the life out of you but does beat tidying up the Evil Lab (but only just).

On the bright side I was given a lovely bottle of Talisker so not that bad a day really and well worth the trip

Regards