Flash firmware¶
Plug in a supported board over USB, then flash µcore directly from this
page. No esptool, no IDF, no Python required for this step.
Browser support
Web Serial requires a Chromium browser (Chrome, Edge, Brave, Opera). Firefox and Safari users can fall back to:
Download the binary for your board from the latest release.
Supported boards¶
| Board | Chip | Binary |
|---|---|---|
| ESP32 (generic) | ESP32 | ucore-esp32-generic.bin |
| ESP32-S3 | ESP32-S3 | ucore-esp32-s3.bin |
What's on the microcontroller after flashing¶
The µcore runtime — a binary implementation of a subset of the Jupyter messaging protocol that runs directly on the microcontroller. It manages a MicroPython interpreter for executing user code, handles named pipes for streaming data back to the host, and communicates over a supported serial transport.
MicroPython is one component of the platform. ucore is the runtime layer that connects it to your notebook — handling cell dispatch, output streaming, pipe multiplexing, and the protocol that makes the kernel on your machine and the firmware on the microcontroller speak the same language.
After flashing, head to Getting started to install the Jupyter kernel.