Getting started with ESP32-C3 on Visual Code, ESP-IDF Plugin

Espressif recently announced the ESP32-C3, and as part of their beta testing, gave out the ESP32-C3-DevKitM-1 to developers globally.

I got my hands on one of these, and after seeing the below video of using the ESP-IDF Plugin within VS Code, I wanted to try it our with the ESP32-C3 as well.

However, turns out the above plugin currently only supports ESP32 and ESP32S2 families. After scratching my head and just before giving up, I finally found a way to hardcode the targets.cmake file (modified version available to download at the en of this writeup) and get the Dev Env setup for ESP32-C3.

I made a video highlighting the steps required to get it working:

I'll also try summarizing the steps through pictures:

1. Install the ESP-IDF extension for VS Code and follow the onboarding steps within the plugin to get the environment ready

Make sure you select the latest master branch of ESP-IDF from the dropdown as shown above.

2. After it's completed, build any hello-world program with the default settings to make sure the environment is properly setup:

3. Modify the targets.cmake file

Once done, edit the targets.cmake file and hardcode it with "esp32c3" variable as shown in the above image (or copy paste from the file attached after making local backup of it).

Also, comment out the next few lines in the file.

4. Clean the project and build it again. It should now generate a new sdkconfig file with ESP32-C3 params and get built successfully. Flash and verify.

Please note this is a temporary solution to try out the ESP32-C3 using the ESP-IDF Plugin in Visual Studio Code, until and official version supporting is released.