ESP32 Arduino: Software reset

The objective of this post is to explain how to perform a software reset on the ESP32, using the Arduino core. The tests of this ESP32 tutorial were performed using a DFRobot’s ESP-WROOM-32 device integrated in a ESP32 FireBeetle board.

Introduction

The objective of this post is to explain how to perform a software reset on the ESP32, using the Arduino core.

The tests of this ESP32 tutorial were performed using a DFRobot’s ESP-WROOM-32 device integrated in a ESP32 FireBeetle board.

If you prefer a video version of this tutorial, please check my YouTube channel below.

The Arduino code

We will start our Setup function code by opening a Serial connection, so we can output a message indicating the program has started.

Serial.begin(115200);

We will then print the mentioned message to the serial port, so we can know when the ESP32 has been restarted and is running again from the beginning.

Serial.println("Restarting in 10 seconds");

After that we will do a small 10 seconds delay before we actually restart the device. To do so, we simply call the delay function, which receives as input the number of microseconds to wait.

delay(10000);

Finally, we will restart the ESP32 with a call to the restart method on the ESP object. This method receives no parameters and returns void.

This ESP object is an extern variable of class EspClass, defined here. You can check at the previous link some other interesting system functions exposed by this object.

Note that we don’t need to perform any library include to access this object, which is available by default.

ESP.restart();

The final full Arduino code can be seen below.

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
  Serial.println("Restarting in 10 seconds");

  delay(10000);

  ESP.restart();

}

void loop() {}

Testing the code

To test the code, simply compile it and upload it to your ESP32 board. Then, open the Arduino IDE serial monitor.

You should get an output similar to figure 1, which shows the initial serial print of the program multiple times, meaning that the ESP32 is indeed being reset and the program is running again from the beginning.

Figure 1 – Restarting the ESP32 via software.