Hi folks,

I've watched the discussion surrounding ESP32-S3 code upload and CDC for awhile now. There have been a number of issues, but its looking like OTG is very close to being strictly better than Hardware CDC+JTAG.

The ideal features for ESP32 Arduino code upload:

• no need to ever power cycle, reset, or put esp32 into boot mode
• device can be uploaded to even in the event of any error like segfaults, pointer errors, ect
• Serial debug (cdc) is possible at any time
• device COM port and board file never changes

I use esp32-S3 for a robot control board. The board is largely use by high-school students new to programming. when I switched from ESP32 to esp32s3 for the system, it tripped a number of students up. My newer board has no USB-TTL chip.

For awhile, uploading was harder because you had to put the board in boot mode every time you wanted to upload. Today, my board files set by default:

• USB CDC On Boot: "Enabled"
• Upload Mode: "UART0 / Hardware CDC"
• USB Mode: "Hardware CDC and JTAG"

With this configuration, most of the upload features are achieved, but in some cases, like if the program crashes, I have found the esp32 needs to manually be put into Boot mode to be "un-bricked" (have yet to find a consistent way to reproduce this).

With the latest changes to the Arduino IDE and ESP32 core, I was hoping switching to USB-OTG mode would fix the problem:

• USB CDC On Boot: "Enabled"
• Upload Mode: "USB OTG (TinyUSB)"
• USB Mode: "USB OTG-CDC (TinyUSB)"

The good news is, this upload/CDC method seems to fix the above issue, but I encountered one more issue. During one of my tests, the device COM port changed(have yet to find a consistent way to reproduce this). This was easy for me to spot but could really throw off a student.

So before I did a bunch of testing and submitted an issue, I wanted to ask the community. Have you been in my shoes on this before? What is the best way right now you have found to upload to esp32s3?