Ali Slim's ESP Offline Flasher Offers a One-Touch Approach to Blowing Firmware Onto Espressif's MCUs

Ali Slim is looking to make it easier to get your code flashed onto an Espressif ESP32 microcontroller without having to mess around with a desktop or laptop computer: the ESP Offline Flasher, which does exactly what its name suggests.

"ESP Offline Flasher is a tool specially designed to program ESP32 microcontrollers, for example, firmware flashing, without the need for a computer or any external software," Slim explains. "It stores firmware files on a 4GB internal eMMC chip that can be accessed as a USB Mass Storage device, and configuration can be set using a CSV file."

The ESP Offline Flasher board itself is compact, and — keeping with the theme — is powered by its own Espressif ESP32-S3 module, though it does not appear to make use of the module's built-in Wi-Fi or Bluetooth radios. There's a single elongated push-button, which reaches through a case to keep everything protected, to trigger an upload to a connected target — which can be powered by the ESP Offline Flasher too, through a single cable.

While getting your code on the ESP Offline Flasher does, of course, require interfacing with a computer, subsequent flashes can happen at the push of a button — including setting configuration settings by loading a comma-separated values (CSV) file onto the board's built-in eMMC storage.

Slim is currently preparing to launch the device on Crowd Supply at an as-yet unannounced price point; a GitHub repository had been created for the project, but at the time of writing was empty.