Faster flashing for ESP8266 (and CC3200) boards

[georgkreimer]

Flashing of the ESP8266 boards takes a while. Anybody who has flashed some of them noticed it's about a minute. I saw this post blog today. Those guys at Cesanta Software have created a modified version of the esptool but also have another flash tool called Flash'N'Chips which reduces the flash times significantly. It would be great to have the flash time reduced for PlatformIO using these 2 options.

[ivankravets]

Anybody who has flashed some of them noticed it's about a minute.

What is your board? Do you use specific LD script?

[georgkreimer]

Just verified with huzzah and NodeMCU breakout boards. It's around 40 sec for me. I'm using the default settings with the PlatformIO IDE

[Jorgen-VikingGod]

maybe this article could help to improve the flashing speed
https://blog.cesanta.com/esp8266-superfast-flashing-flash-esp-in-5-seconds

[eni23]

+1 for the idea that @Jorgen-VikingGod suggested. Using the modified esptool.py from the Mongoose platform (Source: https://github.com/cesanta/mongoose-flashing-tool/blob/master/common/platforms/esp8266/stubs/esptool.py) speeds up flashing a lot compared to the one shipped with PlatformIO:

PlatformIO esptool: 0m16.152s
Modded esptool.py: 0m4.345s
upload_speed: 3000000

Until this or another fast flasher is integrated, one could do a workaround like this (only tested with PlatformIO 3):

Place the modded esptool to tools/esptool-cesanta.py

platformio.ini

[env:nodemcuv2]
platform = espressif
framework = arduino
board = nodemcuv2
upload_speed = 3000000
extra_script = tools/custom_uploader.py

tools/custom_uploader.py

import os
from SCons.Script import DefaultEnvironment

env = DefaultEnvironment()
esptool_mod = "{0}/tools/esptool-cesanta.py".format(env['PROJECT_DIR'])
env.Replace(UPLOADER=esptool_mod)
env.Replace(UPLOADERFLAGS=[
    '--port',
    '$UPLOAD_PORT',
    'write_flash',
    '--flash_baud=$UPLOAD_SPEED',
    '0'
])
env.Replace(UPLOADCMD='$UPLOADER $UPLOADERFLAGS $SOURCE')

[ivankravets]

Moved to platformio/platform-espressif8266#15