You may know the feeling – you’ve just loaded up the handy online Meshtastic firmware flashing tool and are ready to go but then – UH OH – how do I get this particular board into boot mode again? Also known as flash mode, bootloader mode, DFU mode etc. A quick Google search may or may not give you the answer – and after digging through some forums or maybe even the official documentation you realize that it’s not really spelled out simply. We hope to change that here.
Mesh Mentor wants to change that for you with our growing and soon to be handy chart below! Please note that this post is meant to be a quick reference chart for the boot mode button only and assumes that you’ve already got all the right drivers installed on your computer (example: Silicon Labs CP210x drivers for ESP32 boards with CP210x chips).
How to get your* Meshtastic radio into boot mode:
| Meshtastic Device or Board | How To Get It In Boot Mode |
|---|---|
| LilyGo T-Beam S3 Core | Hold Down MIDDLE button (aka User Button) while plugging the USB cable into your computer. It may not auto detect because the T-Beam S3 Core is now only community supported. |
| LilyGo T-Beam Supreme | Hold down the Boot button (nearest the microSD Card Slot)The following process will manually place the device into the Espressif Firmware Download mode:
|
| LilyGo T-Deck | Hold down trackball while plugging the t-deck into your computer |
| LilyGo T-Deck Plus | Hold down trackball while plugging the t-deck into your computer |
| LilyGo T-Deck Pro | This device does NOT have a trackball, but it does have a rocker switch on the upper right side of the device. It’s difficult to see because of the clear case, but the top button is the boot button, and the bottom button is the reset button. Hold the top rocker button down while plugging the USB cable into your computer. The screen may not change since it’s eInk, and there’s no real indicator of it being in boot mode on the screen itself (at least at the time of this post). From there proceed with the flashing process – you may need to specifically select T-Deck Pro from the list of devices instead of autodetecting. There’s NO reason to open the device to try and find a boot button on the circuit board itself inside. Reddit can be wrong. Full first look at the T-Deck Pro post coming soon! |
| Heltec LoRa 32 V3 | With the board facing you (USB-C connector on the left, LCD display on the right side), the boot/user button (marked as “PRG”) is on the top left. Hold this button while plugging in the USB cable to your computer to place the Heltec V3 into bootloader mode. |
| Heltec LoRa 32 V4 | Similar to the V3 above, the board layout is remarkably similar. The one we purchased recently from Rokland came with 2.7.13.597FA0B Alpha firmware pre-installed, so we have not tested flashing it just yet. We did find a good video from Heltec that says to plug the board into the computer first, then hold the boot “top” button and briefly press the reset button. After pressing the reset button, release the boot button then proceed. |
| Heltec Capsule Sensor V3 | With the device off, press and hold the single top button for 8-16 seconds (ours took 10 seconds) until the blue LED under it is lit. You are now in Wireless Boot Mode. More here: https://wiki.heltec.org/docs/devices/open-source-hardware/esp32-series/wireless_boot |
| G2 Station | Plug the USB cable into the computer then press and hold the boot button (top right on the side, just above the display), then briefly press the reset button (bottom button on the right side, just below the display). Your computer should then see it as a JTag USB Serial (or similar phrasing) which means you should be able to flash it. After flashing, press the reset button to complete the process. |
| Nano G2 Ultra | coming soon |
* Did we miss your favorite Meshtastic radio or get something wrong? Let us know in the comments and we’ll add it! Also, please send us special requests in the comments!
