The Ax2WDRobot is based on espressif's ESP32. The provided firmware uses arduino-esp32 toolchain for unified Arduino-Style programming. For firmware development, Visual Studio Code in conjunction with platformio extension are the recommended tools.
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Navigate to https://code.visualstudio.com/download to download and install Visual Studio Code
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Start Visual Studio Code and open Extensions
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In the Extensions screen, search for platformio and install it. After installation VS Code has to be restarted.
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Now, you should have a platformio icon in the left toolbar - click on it
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In the platformio Home menu, click on Open project
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Navigate to the folder where you cloned the github project from and open Ax2WDRobot/firmware/Ax2WDRobot and click Open Firmware.
The Ax2WDRobot uses a Silicon Labs CP210X USB to UART Bridge for communication between PC and robot. Depending on given OS, this driver is already built-in, could be provided as optional Update package or has to be manually installed. In case of a manual installation, please refer to https://www.silabs.com/developers/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-drivers?tab=downloads
After opening the platformio project, the status bar got some additional icons.
To build, just press the Check icon
To upload, first connect the Ax2WDRobot to the PC and turn it on. Then, press the right arrow icon to build and upload the firmware.
The firmware serves html files from an internal filesystem image which has to be initially loaded, too. This process has to be repeated in case of any change on given files in data folder.
- Click on the platformio icon on the left toolbar
- Under Project Tasks in the left window, expand ax2wdrobot->Platform
- Execute Build Filesystem Image
- If not already done, connect the Ax2WDRobot to the PC and turn it on.
- Execute Upload Filesystem Image
For step 4, please ensure that no serial monitor windows are active - otherwise, the filesystem image upload will fail.