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nodemcuplatformio

Can I create NodeMCU projects within VS Code using the PlatformIO extension?

I am attempting to use a ESP-32 dev kit to control WS2812 LED stripes. Discovered there is some firmware called NodeMCU for these dev kits which uses LUA scripts from what I can tell. There is an extension called PlatformIO for VS Code. I had used this to program a Arduino board to flash an LED.

I was wondering if it is possible to use PlatformIO to build the NodeMCU firmware and the LUA scripts then using PlatformIO to download everything to the ESP-32 dev kit. Is that possible?

I am thinking this can't be done since there are only two Framework selections, "Arduino" and "ESP-IDF", when I create a project which doesn't list NodeMCU.

Thanks

Solution

  • With ESP-IDF you would write C-code directly against the SDK. This can be done in Platform IO. This has its advantages but the major downside of course is that a development roundtrip takes some time. The complete build & install (flashing binary) cycle is run for every bit you turn in your source code.

    With NodeMCU you build & install the firmware once and then only transfer the Lua files that changed. The downside here is that you need separate tools for separate tasks. See https://nodemcu.readthedocs.io/en/dev-esp32/ for details.

    1. Build the firmware, either on Linux dev env, on a Linux VM (e.g. on Windows) or with Docker (quite simple, by yours truly).
    2. Flash the firmware. Use esptool.py or the self-contained standalone GUI tool NodeMCU PyFlasher (by yours truly).
    3. Upload Lua code from host to device. Use ESPlorer (very basic editor), NodeMCU Tool or the ChiliPeppr ESP32 Web IDE.