"...gosh, this video is gonna go on forever...", and the audience grins gladly and grabs for another sip of coffee. Always a pleasure to watch/listen to this channel, the longer the better. Can't wait to see the OTA aspects, I think then I have a use case for switching from a SD card method.

Looking forward to the OTA video on this.

Really good timing. Learning about spiff is/was on my todo list but now it will be littleFS. Thanks for saving me the time. Just started learning about esp32 about 2 months ago. They are just incredible modules. So much we can do with them.

I do like the clear warnings about when and where you can use such libraries ... much time can be saved and dead ends avoided if everyone was as straightforward as you Ralph. Many thx.

good technical stuff, a lot of UKposts are just showing you the very basic things like how to blink an LED. You're one of the few showing more advance stuff.

Sir, from the bottom of my heart THANK YOU! You don't know what kind of hell you helped me out of. Thanks you so much! Much Love!

I really enjoy your videos, so glad I can learn these cool stuff for free! Thank You

Thanks for sharing all this info, Ralph. Very useful and interesting!

The delivery is always entertaining lol.

Your videos are excellent. Thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Thankyou... did not know I needed to know these things.. yet. This was and excellent bit of future training. OD

Great that you'll now be doing a long series of videos with the ESP32 ;-) Looking forward to it with anticipation

Always interesting videos... there are so many things to do with that addon... thank you and looking forward to "maybe" more about it, like exchange of data into the program or compiling data from a "bee hive"... Take care.

Clear, concise, complete : thanks

I really enjoyed this video dude. I notice there are a bunch of people in the comments who think they can do better so I'm looking forward to their videos. Keep up the good work!

Nice info, thanks for sharing :)

Very helpful ! Thanks a lot !

Very well explained...thanks for posting it....

Thanks Ralph....We need more videos on ESP32 ...😊👍

Thank you. This cleared up all my questions. One thing, after selecting the ESP sketch data upload I was not given the type of SPIFFS system options of LittleFS or SPIFFS as shown in your video. It just proceeded to upload on the assumption is was littleFS

I love your style, Ralph. No duffa duffa music. No mouse flying every which way at light speed. And no wasting 15 seconds of my time with an opening "See what I can do!" flashy title sequence. Just a calm dialogue in understandable English and in sufficient depth to get the essential information across without befuddling even my ageing brain. Things have become so much more complex now than when I did my first embedded development ca 1974! I am now happily retired, and working on a design for a gadget for my club that must store a series of events and remotely (WiFi) supplied information. I have included an SD card because I feared using the ESP32 flash might compromise the potential for OTA updates, but you put my mind at rest in that regard. Is there any attempt at wear levelling in LittleSPIFS that you are aware of, or must I worry about that myself. And do you happen know what the endurance is for the ESP32 flash? Thanks again.

Very cool. I use SPIFFS a lot and didn't even know about LittleFS. Thank you!

thanks so much.. excellent tutrials

Very interesting video, thank you!

Very informative video SIR 👍

Hi Ralph, Excellent video as usual ! Learned something new :-) I'm curious about the solderless breadboard you use in your video. I have never seen one of those. Do you have a link where you buy one of those ? Thanks.

I am in the process of porting my Arduino MKR wifi 1010 data logger to ESP32, and building it on PlatformIO, using freeRTOS for at least some key parts of it. This is the new platform and toolchain for my beta. As I'm doing the R&D, I have been running across LittleFS and SPIFFS references in various documentation, but didn't understand the context. Likewise I see the ESP32 specs with all these wonderful built-in features and resources so I'm drawn to investigate how to put it all together take advantage and make the best possible product. Thanks for packing so much useful knowledge in an easy to consume format! Where is that subscribe button.... 😃

Hello Ralph. Thanks for the video. FWIW I followed the instructions "To a T" and... it didn't work. I checked, double checked, scratched my head... and investigated. For some reason, there was a mismatch in the location of my sketches. File->Preferences said one thing, but preferences.txt said something different (and was wrong). Correcting the entry in preferences.txt worked magic and, voila, the tool showed up! Maybe someone will find this useful. Thanks again! As I dive more into ESP32, you are becoming one of my favorite UKpostsrs.

Excellent channel Ralph. Easy to follow presentation style and really useful and interesting content! Thanks. Is there an update that allows the plug-in to work with Arduino IDE 2.0.3?

Hoora!!! Finally using the 'full' capacity of the ESP32 Chip! and also no need for an SD card (almost!) - Can we use the LittleFS as a true FS - meaning writing files from the sketch itself? like a logger with size limitation that we can add for the ESP32. that way we can use it AS IS (no extra HW needed) in the field to collect data for us also! it will send the data to our man server of course - But we will have a portion of the latest data on the CHIP itself if we want to have a local backup or to read it from a different location using UART connection with the board. As always Great Video Ralph!! Thanks

I discovered SPIFFS was on its way out earlier this week, I guess we are on the same hymn sheet! I converted a project to LittleFS on an 8266 but I didn't need to install anything, LittleFS is already included in the ESP8266 package....the include statement doesn't need to be capitalised either. Thanks for the upload.

Thanks for taking the time to produce your informative and entertaining videos. I was inspired to have a go at building the web radio using the same T8 V1.7.1 wrover board, which I checked has the version 1 silicon. But I was hitting the same wall as others here with the mklittlefs utility and Arduino. I was able to get the upload option it to appear in the menu ok, but despite copying the utility to several locations, it always failed with the mklittlefsnot found error. I was about to give up when I spotted a clue in your video at time 18:41, where Arduino appears to be using the tool form an esp8266 folder. So I installed esp8266 support into Arduino and tada.. it worked perfectly. :-) I'm now having trouble getting the WiFi to connect, but that's another story..

Love the channel Ralph, and great tutorial, I've use SPIFFS and Little FS for a few projects thanks to this video. Quick question, I have a bunch of the new ESP32C3 RISC V boards and the original Arduino file uploader will not work with the RISC V boards. I have searched for an updated version but to no avail. Have you encountered this issue? or do you have an alternate option?

Well, I have yet to use SPIFFS or LITTLEFS . Nevertheless it is always irksome to know there is spare capacity on one's MCU. This appears to be an excellent answer to that problem (I can feel my OCD melting away as I write). I suspect it could also be used to facilitate a more sophisticate UI . Excellent video, Ralph. It is a gift to be able to present a subject that most of your subscribers (including one's self) have not thought about and yet still make it interesting. Expanding one's horizons is free, I take it?

Hi Ralph. Long time no..... I did struggle a little with this video. Certainly up to the best of your usual entertaining/teaching techniques. Watched it a few times before things came together for me. I also experienced some mklittlefs file errors like others. The compiler just wouldn't find the file when located in a new tools directory where all the sketches are. Thanks to other comments below I ended up placing the exe in C:\Users\myfiles\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\esp32\hardware\esp32\1.0.2\tools. I'm using IDE version 1.8.12 . I did try 13 when it was introduced but found I could no longer flash Atmega328P chips so reverted to 12. Anyway, thanks for a chance to grow my (meagre) knowledge. I haven't played with the ESP32 much since buying it so am looking forward to seeing future videos on this subject. Keep up the good work...

FAT a.k.a. File Allocation Table, is a really old relic filesystem coming from the age of floppy disks, DOS and later Windows, its "newer" version FAT32 (from 1996) is still used on USB/Flash drives (for better or worse).

Terrific Ralph! Great new set of knowledge. Here's a future video suggestion if it appeals to you: Right now, I'm storing a series of 1 bit bitmap images in a sketch as byte arrays. So they're part of the sketch size and that limits the number of images I can store. Then I display the images on an ePaper display using the image commands from the gxEPD2 library. Is there a way that I can store the .bmp images as .bmp FILES onto the LittleFS system and then load them directly onto the ePaper using the gxEPD2 library. That would be cool as I wouldn't be hitting the sketch max size limit! Just something for future consideration. Thank you again for a great video Ralph. Gord

Really great tutorial and thanks for the heads-up about LittleFS, it's a great library! Have you ever tried to open and read or write to a file in the loop() method? I am getting Guru Meditation Error and I can't get around it. Thanks.

Great Tutorial...!! It would be a bonus if you show us how to add data from sensors to text file ? and same accessible using webserver ?

Hi Ralph Bacon! Interesting video. Got the setup for ESP32FS. Where do we get the plugin for ESP8266?

Nice, thanks!

Excellent video.

Excelent video, and perfect timing just in time for lunch :-) A few comments, most EPS8266 mostly all except the ESP01 includes a 4MB spi memory chip, if you have an ESP01 with 512KB or 1MB, Andreas Spiess has a video how too uppgrade it, Ive done a few times, and Im definatly not an smd guy, love my troughhole and its big solderpads, and only managed to brick one ESP01.. Any way Andreass video is this one : #34 ESP-01/ESP-07 4Mbyte Memory Upgrade and OTA .

Thanks Ralph

I hadn't previously realised that that your affiliate links applied to anything I purchase. I'll be using them from now on.

Note that you can't add tools to the tool menu anywhere in the Arduino IDE v2+. If you want to do this you need to install pre version 2 eg v1.8.19. In that version your tools will magically appear. This issue has been in the Git repository since the change-over so I doubt they intend to fix it. Also don't forget to turn off the serial monitor while uploading otherwise you'll get a cryptic error.

Great!, thank!

Really useful video.. again... :-) My ESP32 crashed every second day and I didnt have an SD card reader and where really wondering how in earth I could log the data.... now I know..... and speaking of tools, is it allowed to recommend "ESP Exception Decoder"....

wow you can get to the moon on that one lol... i must look into these little things as someone whos just getting into this things man what a learning curve.. thank goodness for coffee and packet of fruit shortcake :) top stuff fella .. mind is blown away..

Thanks Ralph. Worth mentioning that if you choose to format your fs, it will take a little time - your app hasn't crashed or frozen. Just wait and all will be well.

As usual - great video. A file system do lift the esp to another level. 1 mega byte of code is an awful lot of coding, just imagine typing 1 million characters. It would be great to learn how to send and receive files. Maybe how to use a received file that changes data strings or how the program runs. By the way, how is things going with your "Self Balancing Bot"?

Ah, I struggled with SPIFFS last year. Good for storing web pages, as the ESP is often used as a household mini-web server. Looking at the the LITTLEFS tool names, it appears it is a FAT16, but could be wrong. In the Linux world, one would might mount the contiguous "drive" file as as a "loopback device", and write directly to it like a drive.

If I create a .bin for later OTA update, does it include the files destined for storage in SPIFFS/LittleFS? If not, how can we update these files via OTA?

Is it better to have many smaller files, or, a fewer larger files that I navigate within? For instance: Should I have a separate file for each of my set temp, humidity, and co2 vals... OR 1 single file with all those parameters in separate lines or some other delimiters that I can use Stream methods to find?

so i want to use the littlefs binary for my node mcu so the binary you showed in the video remains same for the esp 8266? I mean can i use the same binary for me 8266??

Hello, I have a question. Can we use SPIFFS and LittleFS in the same program? Thanks. Marc.

It's not obvious at the start, probably should have mentioned which version of the Arduino IDE is used for this tutorial. Earlier versions of the Arduino IDE does not have the same pull-down menu items. Most developers do not change their development environment to the latest & greatest. An earlier version of the 1.8.x actually broke. I will have to install the version used in your tutorial on a VM & do a short sanity test with my critical builds. Thank you this video.

hey Ralph, amazing tutorial, I have just one question, it's kinda overboard yet hear me out, let's say i have used SPIFFS or LITTLEFS, and wrote the whole code and now its time for production, uploading the data files for development is piece of cake. How exactly can i do it without using arduino IDE or this tool? i am assuming that we write directly to the flash memory, but again how exactly does that work?

Hello Ralph, thanks for your great tutorial. I have the following problem: I have IDE 1.8.15 - you work with 1.8.13 But I didn't have the the following menu options under tools menu: Flash Mode Flash size Partition Scheme Also, if I write some data with ESP32 Sketch Data Upload, I will get the error "SPIFF Mount failt:10025" - that the board cannot open flash after a reboot. What to do, to get this menu options and do you have a solution for the Error 10025? Thanks Guenter

Love this, please follow up with how to pull the file from the device. I would like to have the ESP32 for my garden and once a day (week?) send the data file to my PC or RPi, or to my e-mail, or allow me to use my cell phone and download the data file.

Thanks

Hi Ralph thank you for a great video! I only had a minor glitch with the tools: The Arduino IDE couldn´t find "mklittlefs.exe" and the solution I discovered is to place it into this folder C:\Users\myuserfolder\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\esp32\hardware\esp32\1.0.4\tools Hope this workaround helps someone with the same error. Thanks again for such cool videos!

Hi Ralph, Having completely reinstalled Arduino (1.8.13) on Win10 64bit OS I'm now a member of the "littlefs not found" club. It does appear in the drop down and the other workrounds and solutions mentioned below and elsewhere don't work for me. At one point I considered it might be Windows Defender or, in my case, Kaspersky, stopping the apps running as clicking on the individual apps showed a Windows Defender warning. All files are in the correct folders and are the same release as those used in the video. I'm off now to try on another PC ....

Can you explain how to use spiffs for saving user configaration on esp8266 ? Thanks 👍

Ralph, Just installed LittleFS-esp32 with library installer in Arduino IDE. After that the library is there, but when compiling it says: ~/Arduino/libraries/LittleFS_esp32/src/LITTELEFS.h: "fatal error: FS.h: No such file or directory". Where can I get it, or do I need some other version of the lib?

Excellent explanation, thank you very much 😄 I tried to find examples and it never worked, until now. The Arduino recognizes "Data Upload" in version 1.8.19, not in 2.0 who knows why?!

Oddly enough the esp32 core documentation doesnt seem to mention littlefs at all while the esp8266 says that spiffs will be depreciated

all i want to do is calibrate an analog voltage sensor on 3 different samples A B C: Code-A-zero = 055 Code-A-span = 500, Code-B-zero = 045 Code-B-span = 614, Code-C-zero = 102 Code-C-span = 476... Then cycle power on the esp32 with the saved calibration numbers maintained. also these numbers will be updated for new samples. thanks any ideas? 🤔 great video.😊

Hi Ralph. Is there any way of using this as non-volatile memory to upload WiFi settings (perhaps using WiFi direct) to a Python script that provides an IoT function? I'm finding it tedious to recompile and upload entire scripts for friends who want their own version of the temp/hum Adafruit IO python script running on a ESP32, just to effect a change to their WiFi

Hi. thx for the vidéo One question, my program to read a file in littlefs mode works on Arduino IDE I copy / paste the same code in Platformio and I have an error : Failed to open file for reading Any idea why it doesn't word ?

Hi Ralph, have been using spiffs for some time so i had the tools folder with the esp8266 and esp32 spiffs upload utilities. ESP32 Sketch Data Upload ESP8266 Sketch Data Upload Followed yr instructions but when i go to the partition scheme......no littleFS. I did install little FS for 8266 and that actually gave me a separate entry in my tools menu, next to the sketch data upload utilities, that says: ESP8266 LittleFS Data Upload. I wonder why its different for esp8266 and esp32. Anyway i ll try a few things and see where it leads me.

Probably I have a damaged/convoluted Arduino environment, but I could only make fatfs work by placing the mkfatfs and mklittlefs.exe executables in .C:\Users\myusernamewhichisnoneofyourbusiness\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\esp32\hardware\esp32\1.0.4\tools\ The ESP32FS tool seems to only look there for these executables, as far as I understand the Java source code. LittleFS worked initially, but that was because it found and used the mklittlefs.exe for the ESP8266, which is not necessarily similar. Installing the ESP32FS tool could be done in the tools subdirectory of the Arduino Sketch folder. (fun fact, if you create the folder as esp32fs ( lowercase) it doesn't work, which is one of the reasons why I am not overjoyed with the combination of Windows and Java). Just yesterday evening I started looking for a way to upload an FFat file system. Thanks for your serendipitous video Ralph.

Great video. Just one thing to point is that B != b. So 4MB = 32Mb. 1Byte is 8bits

I see in the include files that LittleFS come with FreeRTOS package . Can I use this Rtos in my code ?

I downloaded the three files into the tool folder (..tools/ESP32FS/tool). I have the txt file as described. when I try to upload, I get the message "LittleFS Error: mklittlefsnot found!". The ESP I am using is a nodeMCU-32S. This board does not bring up any option for selecting the partition. I did run LITTLEFS_test (from the libraries tree) and it worked. Is it the fact that I have a nodemcu board causing this?

Hi Ralph, Thought I was late as just got notification but seems I’m first to comment. All the best.

Ralph, It seems a hurdle race. Right now I've this message: "LittleFS Create Failed!" And I don't know what to do. At first I get: "Can't find mklittlefs" upon that I moved the files mkfatfs and mklittlefs to: "users/username/Libraries/Arduino15/packages/esp32/hardware/esp32/1.0.4/tools" And now this one: "LittleFS Create Failed!" Do you have any thoughts please?

Ralph, I've fallen into the Arduino-SketchBook-trap. Out of the box the Arduino IDE comes with a path to the sketchbook as: "/users/username/documents/arduino". While there's no information whatsoever that THIS is the sketchbook I created my own sketchbook directory as: "appearance /users/username/documents/arduino/tools", and... all is well! This is just in case there are maybe people like me: Be warned!

Hey, i am working on a project and inneed to upload an html and css file and i tried with spiffs and eventualu did upload the html file but when i tried to upload the css file the web server didnt read it and also almost all the times the web server didnt load in chrome. I’ve been trying some solution ps but none of them work and now the code that did work with the html only, does not work now, and i dont know why. Could you please help me? I could send you the codes if you need because this is for my robotics school project

I would like to join the littlefs users, but I cant get it working. Upload tool is installed, SPIFFS and erase flash is working but always get mklittelfs not found. tried to install in all possible "tools" folders but no change. my mkspiffs is loading from: C:\Users\dokto\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\esp32\tools but mklittlefs will also not work from there... Anybody with help?

At 6:07 kept me attending. 1.... B... 3...

how to do this in PlatformIO?

How many read/write operation before it dies?

Could you make all more advanced features in platform io pls 😜

😊😊😊😊

Thanks Ralph. I have a SPIFFS project in the queue now, but I will link in the LittleFS info (yes I know ALL CAPS). Funny part is that I read SPLIFFS when I first saw your posting. Serial Peripheral Little Interface Flash File System?

what does %s/r/n mean in c++?

Ralph, Some perseverance is always handy to solve several problems. First: I have to find a mklittlefs file for the Mac; found it here: github.com/earlephilhower/mklittlefs/releases Second: I must persuade my Mac to trust that developer. Third: I used a simple test sketch. Fourth: HOLD DOWN THE BOOT BUTTON when it says: Connecting ..... _____ ..... #include "LITTLEFS.h" void setup() { Serial.begin(115200); if(!LITTLEFS.begin(true)) { Serial.println("An Error has occurred while mounting LITTLEFS"); return; } File file = LITTLEFS.open("/Some_shit.txt"); if(!file){ Serial.println("Failed to open file for reading"); return; } Serial.println("File Content:"); while(file.available()){ Serial.write(file.read()); } file.close(); } void loop() {}

The git has completely changed the files since last year. A new video is in order. This process was painful and confusing. I did managed to seem to get it working tho on my firebeetle esp32 tho after pulling my hair out.

How is this done on platformIO ?

..prefer esp8266 ...robust xp compitable ..something wrong with esp32 upload ...it needs to be reset on upload...or missing a cap between EN to gnd

3 megabytes! That's like 10 floppies!

I know this is asking an awful lot but why can't you do this and android?

Eureka.

Oh! My head, I woke with a head ache and it got worse, not your fault of course, but mine, any chance you could do an instrutional video of using tasmota/tasmotizer, that really should give me a headache :-)

LittleFS Error: mklittlefs not found!

Without waiting for the video to finish, it's too bad those tools are Windows exe's. Not all of the world uses Windows.

Why? This is my question after watching this video... Really... Why??? The only reason explained in this video to prefer LittleFS over SPIFFS is directories and resiliency in power failures which was never an issue on SPIFFS anyway. Also a vague argument that Espressif mentioned that SPIFFS will not be supported in the future (a source would be useful). I think he probably means that the open-source community that develops Arduino core for ESP8266 stopped support for SPIFFS. They are NOT Espressif, which officially supports SPIFFS on ESP-IDF for both ESP8266 and ESP32. The ESP32 Arduino core open-source community IS indeed guided by Espressif and it has not deprecated SPIFFS or added support for LittleFS. But if it was just the lack of explanation of why LittleFS is useful, I wouldn't spend the time to write this. The main reason I'm writing this is the amount of misinformation contained! 1. At 2:25 referring to a generic 2.5" SATA SSD: "this is a laptop disk". Really? How are desktop SSDs? In fact, laptops only used these 2.5" SATA SSD for a short period of time many years ago. 2. At 3:32, he implies that you need to have a huge program to go over 500K of his "huge" Home Alone project. Well, just include "BluetoothSerial.h" in an empty sketch and make a simple call to it, and you get 850kb of compiled program with just 2 lines of code. Also include "Wifi.h" and a call to that library. Now you have 4 lines of code and you are looking at 1.3Mb compiled size. I guess I'm crazy using Bluetooth and Wifi on ESP32, a SoC you buy specifically for these 2 features. 3. At 6:16 video says LittleFS is faster. I copy from official LittleFS github page "SPIFFS will likely outperform littlefs on small memories such as the internal flash on microcontrollers". These are the words of the developers of LittleFS themselves. But this guy knows better. 4. At 6:30 narrator starts to explain 3 reasons why LittleFS was developed. Number 3 is an "unfortunate disadvantage". So, apparently one of the reasons LittleFS was developed was to have disadvantages. 4. At 6:45 narrator confuses RAM of ESP8266 with its flash memory amount. 5. At 8:17 you can clearly see that the creator of LittleFS library for ESP32 is a 3rd-party programmer called "lorol". Then on 8:44 and 8:56 video says that the Espressif (?????) documentation for a 3rd part library is wrong! So the video implies LittleFS library is made by Espressif and apparently the documentation is bad. A link to that Espressif documentation of 3rd party library would be useful! I think this guy is reading documentation of ESP8266 Arduino Core and applies it in 3rd party library for ESP32! WTF? 6. At 9:32, "LittleFS is the obvious choice". Well, I guess we'll just have to take his word for that. 7. At 11:33 the sketch folder where you need to create the "tools" subfolder, is not "where you like to save your sketches" as the video says. You can save your sketches anywhere, but you need to create the tools subfolder under the official sketches folder that the Arduino IDE recognizes, and you can find that in the Arduino IDE preferences dialog. Nice step-by-step guide. 8. At 15:20 he wonders why would anyone like to run their ESP32 not at full speed because obviously he never made a battery based project. He easily advises everyone to use full speed. 9. At 15:47 the whole point he makes about Arduino reading the chip is a totally made up assumption which is NOT true. redundancy 11: At 17:30 there is so much misinformation about what OTA is, I don't know where to start. Sketch is uploaded??? Sketch is uploaded temporarily in a partition and then moved to "program memory"??? What even is "program memory"? Has this guy ever done OTA? 12. At 18:25, that FatFS that this guy "haven't even investigated" is the thing that he should investigate and spare us from watching this video. FAT is a filesystem that has directories and wear leveling, is officially supported by Espressif, does not need any 3rd party libraries like LittleFS does. It works right out of the box without installing any extra libraries. And it's not "deprecated" (as apparently SPIFFS is) because its used in computers (it's the one most USB flash drives and SD cards are formatted with for compatibility with both Windows AND Mac). How cool to have the same computer FS on your ESP32? It's also faster than LittleFS, as you can see here: github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/issues/3765 Well... this guy didn't investigate but gives good advice about what FS to use on your ESP32.

I downvoted because the video failed to explain to me what the contents of the video are, even your github fun doesn't help. Your british accent doesn't cover for the incoherent boomer rambling.

8:50 it is not only case sensitive but these are 2 different libraries for 2 different implementations: "LittleFS" and "LITTLEFS" - so big difference between LittleFS.h and LITTLEFS.h