ESP32-S3 flash example

Hardware
1

Just a quick step-through for flashing a esp32-s3:

Example device: esp32 s3 n16r8, 16MB flash, 8MB psram, 2 usb-c ports

  • download your wled binary (in this example: ‘WLED_0.15.3_ESP32-S3_16MB_opi.bin‘)
  • plug USB into port named ‘COM’ on device
  • goto web flasher ‘https://td-er.nl/ESPEasy/‘
  • select version ‘20250430 MAX 16M8M PSRAM LittleFS ETH [ESP32-S3]‘
  • click ‘CONNECT’, find your COM port and erase/flash
  • reset, plug usb into port named ‘USB‘ on device
  • search devices own AP point in wifi networks and connect to it with WPA key 'configesp‘
  • see also ‘ Config page — ESP Easy 2.1-beta1 documentation ‘
  • goto device webpage ‘192.168.4.1‘ → Tools → Update Firmware
  • select the wled binary from your local drive and flash it
  • search wled AP point in wifi networks and connect
  • configure
2

The sequence shown above is of course if you can’t get a working boot loader and partition information onto your s3 prior to flashing your firmware.

Installing ESPEasy will do that for you. After that you only have to replace the firmware (starting at 0x10000) with the WLED firmware via firmware update.

3

Or just install in one go from https://wled-install.github.io/

4

just a warning: using third-party bootloaders can have side effects so it is not recommended to do that.

5

This is good information. There is a reason this has to be done this way

6

It depends what device you want to flash.

I use the command line esptool for most standard esp32s. Reason is, that for the online flasher the os com port selection window sometimes doesn’t find the correct port or it is not clear which shown com port is which. The esptool elaborates on each com port it finds and states whether there is an esp32 device attached to it or not. So it is simpler to go from there.

I use the online flasher for esp32-c3s because mine often fail to open the default wled-ap after flashing, so then I am stuck there. The online flasher lets you configure the connection to the local wifi network immediately after flashing, and then everything works fine.

The procedure shown above is for my esp32-s3 16M flash memory device. I couldn’t get it to work with either of the two other methods, and the reason seemed to be that the bootloader wasn’t booting properly. So by installing a third party firmware with its own bootloader - which worked fine - I could get around the bootloader problem. Then installing the pure wled firmware over it made everything work without problems so far. I’ll keep dedehais warning in mind, and if there is any problem that might be caused by side effects of that approach I will update this thread accordingly.

7

I have the same chip type and the 8 4 variations.

I agree I couldn’t get the online one to work properly with it. Used the alternative one where its possible to select your chip but was very hit and miss.