ESP32 Serial Swiss Army Knife

ESP32-S3 firmware for a secure, multi-transport RS-232 adapter. It operates one MAX3243-backed UART1 serial port and safely shares it between native USB CDC-ACM, an HTTPS/WebSocket browser terminal, and SSH: one connected client can write while others observe. The firmware also provides persistent serial and Wi-Fi configuration, a UART0 recovery console, and hardware diagnostics; it is not a general-purpose router, captive portal, or unauthenticated TCP serial server.

Initial hardware target

• ESP32-S3-DevKitC-1-compatible development board
• ESP32-S3-WROOM-1-N16R8 module
• 16 MB flash
• 8 MB octal PSRAM
• Adafruit MAX3243 full-pinout male RS-232 breakout

Development status

Hardware characterization, the serial core, session broker, and native USB CDC-ACM are complete. The Wi-Fi foundation is implemented and substantially validated, with several smoke tests still pending. The project is currently in the SSH-Phase; later work includes interface hardware, security hardening, OTA, BLE, enterprise Wi-Fi, WireGuard evaluation, and optional storage features. See the Roadmap for validation details and roadmap.

Documentation

• Hardware wiring: hardware profile, GPIO assignments, connector guidance, and safety notes.
• Electrical tests: MAX3243, UART loopback, and session-broker verification procedures.
• Command reference: UART0 administration, serial, broker, USB, Wi-Fi, web, SSH, and diagnostic commands.

Flash partition layout

The N16R8 target has 16 MiB flash and 8 MiB octal PSRAM. PlatformIO uses the custom partitions.csv layout:

Partition	Offset	Size	Purpose
nvs	0x009000	512 KiB	Serial, Wi-Fi, shared admin credential, HTTPS identity, and SSH host-key data
otadata	0x089000	8 KiB	Active OTA-slot selection metadata
phy_init	0x08B000	4 KiB	Optional PHY initialization data
nvs_key	0x08C000	4 KiB	Reserved for future encrypted-NVS keys
coredump	0x08D000	128 KiB	Reserved for flash core dumps
ota_0	0x0B0000	4 MiB	Primary application/OTA slot
ota_1	0x4B0000	4 MiB	Alternate application/OTA slot
storage	0x8B0000	7488 KiB	Reserved for future LittleFS web assets, logs, and files

Application offsets are aligned to the ESP32-S3's required 64 KiB boundary. The final storage partition ends at 0x1000000, exactly the end of the 16 MiB flash chip.

The table reserves OTA and storage space; it does not implement OTA downloads, rollback confirmation, core-dump handling, NVS encryption, or filesystem mounting.

One-time migration from the default partition table

The previous 1 MiB factory application began at 0x10000, which now lies inside the enlarged NVS range. A normal upload does not erase stale data in that range. When first switching to this layout, erase the flash completely:

pio run --target erase
pio run --target upload
pio device monitor -b 115200

This removes saved serial configuration and all other flash contents. The firmware recreates NVS with safe defaults. Subsequent ordinary uploads do not need a full erase.

Build

pio run

Upload and monitor

Connect the board's USB-to-UART port for firmware upload and the UART0 development console, then run:

pio run --target upload
pio device monitor -b 115200

The firmware provides an interactive UART0 console at serial-tool>. Run help for available commands. The USB-to-UART bridge normally appears as /dev/ttyUSB*; it is separate from the native USB CDC serial transport, which normally appears as /dev/ttyACM*.

The console supports session history, line editing, cursor movement, and hierarchical Tab completion. After an unattended boot, attach an ANSI-capable terminal and press Enter once to enable enhanced editing; this avoids blocking while no terminal is attached.

Serial configuration and Wi-Fi edits remain in RAM until explicitly saved with serial save or wifi save. Retrieve generated web and SSH credentials only from the physical UART0 console with web credentials show.

Security notes

The HTTPS interface uses a device-specific self-signed certificate and HTTP Basic authentication over TLS; there is no plaintext HTTP or TCP serial listener. SSH supports password-authenticated interactive shell sessions only. The shared admin password, HTTPS private key, SSH private key, and Wi-Fi credentials are currently stored in plaintext application-owned NVS blobs. The reserved nvs_key partition does not enable encryption. Do not treat this firmware as resistant to physical flash or RAM extraction until the planned hardening work is complete.

License

This project is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 only (GPL-3.0-only). Third-party components remain subject to their respective licenses. The integration baseline uses Espressif registry components wolfssl/wolfssl 5.8.2~1 and wolfssl/wolfssh 1.4.20; review upstream security releases before production use.