A few months ago we may have bought a few ESP32-C3-DevKit-Lipo boards from Olimex.

Since every time I go back to working with them I’ve forgotten how to do so, and my old notes on the fediverse are hard to find, this is the full procedure.

Setup

I start by sort-of-following https://docs.espressif.com/projects/arduino-esp32/en/latest/installing.html

• Install arduino from the distribution packages (version 1.8 is ok).
• Under File → Preferences, add the development URL to the Additional Boards Manager URLs field. (on 2023-04-30 that’s https://espressif.github.io/arduino-esp32/package_esp32_dev_index.json).
• Under Tools → Board → Boards Manager make sure that you install a version of esp32 by Espressif Systems that is above 2.0 (on 2023-04-30 there is a 2.0.8 that works).

Programming

• Under Tools → Board → ESP32 Arduino select ESP32C3 Dev Module.
• Under Tools → USB CDC On Boot select Enabled.

You can now compile and upload your sketches.

If something goes wrong, to force the board to bootloader mode bring GPIO9 to GND.

Note that the serial port device /dev/ttyACM0 only appears when in bootloader mode, but uploading sketches and the serial monitor will still work even if the port is not set in the arduino IDE.

Update 2024-09-04: These instructions have been ported to https://docs.trueelena.org/microcontrollers/olimex-esp32-c3-devkit-lipo/index.html where they will be kept up to date.