Can't connect to my ESP32 board via serial

Question

I'm completely new to electronics work.

Today I've received the ESP32 board that I ordered. (It's a WROOM-32.) I followed the instructions here. I connected the board to my computer via USB and I successfully installed the CP210x drivers and got a new serial port COM3, but when I tried to connect to the board with that serial port, I got nothing. I'm on Windows 7.

I tried with Tera Term, and it just shows an empty screen.

I tried type COM3 in the shell, but got an empty string.

I tried doing esptool.exe --chip esp32 -p com3 erase_flash, but I get "Failed to connect to ESP32: Timed out waiting for packet header".

I tried playing with the two buttons on the WROOM32 board, but that didn't help.

Any idea what I'm doing wrong? I'm a complete newbie so it's likely that I'm forgetting something basic.

Answer 1

The issue is that the Serial port on the ESP32-WROOM setup is not like like on the Arduino. It seems that the initialisation will 'miss' the USB enumeration after reboot.

To fix this add a delay in your setup() function of 10 to 15-seconds before initialising the serial.

For example:

void setup() {
  delay(10000);
  Serial.begin(115200);

  Serial.println("Setting up Access Point...");
  .
  .
  .