The easiest way to install the firmware is using either BrewFlasher or the firmware flow in Fermentrack.
BrewFlasher is a standalone application for MacOS and Windows that allows for the firmware to be automatically downloaded & flashed to your controller. It was specifically designed to make flashing this project easy. For most users, this is the ideal installation method.
Fermentrack is a web interface that BrewPi controllers can connect to/be managed by. If you were already planning on using Fermentrack to manage your BrewPi controller then this is a perfect alternative to either using BrewFlasher or flashing manually.
The easiest way is to use the custom script in my brewpi-tools fork, though the script only completes steps 1 & 4 of the below. Alternatively, you can install this manually by doing the following:
- Install esptool using PIP (
pip install esptool
) - Hook up the ESP8266 to your Raspberry Pi with a USB cable
- Locate the USB serial bridge device. Generally this will be
/dev/ttyUSB0
, however if there is any question you can see a mapping of all USB serial devices by looking in/dev/serial/by-id
. - Download the repo to your Raspberry Pi using
git clone
- Change to the
bin
directory (cd /home/brewpi/esp8266/bin
, or the appropriate directory) - Flash the firmware (
esptool --port /dev/ttyUSB0 write_flash -fm=dio -fs=32m 0x00000 /home/brewpi/esp8266/bin/brewpi-esp8266.v0.6.wifi.bin
)
Note: If you receive an error stating command not found
when flashing the firmware, it may be that the esptool is not in your path. Use the following command with explicit paths:
python /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 write_flash -fm=dio -fs=32m 0x00000 /home/brewpi/esp8266/bin/brewpi-esp8266.v0.11.wifi.bin
- If you are using macOS 10.13 or lower, then you will likely have to install a driver for the USB serial chip that is on most ESP8266 D1 minis. You can download it from here: https://kig.re/downloads/CH341SER_MAC.ZIP . macOS 10.14 Mojave and higher do not require this driver, and installing it may cause issues on your system.
- Install a version of Python 3.x from https://www.python.org/downloads/
- Install esptool using PIP (
pip3 install esptool
) - Hook up the ESP8266 to your Mac with a USB cable
- Locate the USB serial bridge device. Generally this will be
/dev/tty.wchusbserial1410
or something similar. - Download the repo to your Mac using
git clone
- Change to the
bin
directory (cd ~/Downloads/brewpi-esp8266/bin
, or the appropriate directory) - Flash the firmware (
python3 /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.7/lib/python3.7/site-packages/esptool.py --port /dev/tty.wchusbserial1410 write_flash -fm=dio 0x00000 brewpi-esp8266.v0.11.wifi.bin
)
You can probably install this using esptool similar to the instructions above.
The esp8266 modules may be flashed with the NodeMCU Flasher for Windows: https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-flasher
Download from the Win32/Release or Win64/Release folder in the repository as appropriate for your architecture.