New beta firmware updater 1.13.1.b4

[Xykon]

Beta Version 1.13.1.b4 is now available:

Here are the download links:

Windows download
MacOS download
Linux downloads

The main reason for this release is to produce a unified updater that also supports the upcoming release of Pybytes. You shouldn't see anything Pybytes related in this release (please let me know if you do).

There are also a few bug fixes so it's still worth upgrading to this release.

Please let me know if you encounter any issues.

[robert-hh]

@xykon For me it is sufficient as it is now.

[Xykon]

@robert-hh Great thanks a lot. I'll leave it as is for now as I don't want to risk breaking something else by activating this reset by default.

If you have any other ideas to make the tool more useful please let me know.

[robert-hh]

@xykon Yes, that seems to work. Thanks a lot.

[Xykon]

@robert-hh The new release is out now. Can you please test the new -r / --reset option to see if that's working?

[robert-hh]

@xykon Thanks for the response. The espressif's reset method works with almost any ESP32 and ESP8266 board, like those of Wemos or Sparkfun. But I can test that if you like.

[Xykon]

@robert-hh Hello Robert,

Thanks a lot for the feedback.

I don't have a board to test switching into firmware update mode using Espressif's reset method, so I can't really test if it works. I will add support to manually enable the reset. I think the reason we disabled it in the first place was because it was crashing the PIC based boards so it shouldn't be a problem to enable it by default in ftdi mode but before I do this I want to make sure I've tested it on all operating systems.

I also found the bug that was preventing some commands to not run properly when running the tool with the -c / --continuation option. This should be fixed in the next release (probably Sunday or Monday).

[robert-hh]

@xykon Hello @xycon. This is a good tool for maintaining devices. I have a request for an extension. At the moment, switching into bootloader mode either uses a FTDI or PIC mode. the FTDI mode requires a GPIO0->GND jumper and a manual reset. However, operations which include several steps do not seem to work this way, like for instance erase_fs.
Also, is it possible to implement the bootloader-mode transition the way esptool initially supports, by toggling RTS and DTR? I made few e baseboards myself with the standard two transistor logic, avoiding the hazzle with the PIC.