Flashing ESP32-S3 devices
Disconnect battery and USB from Heltec V4. Open Flasher, select Heltec V4, select firmware V2.7.13, click Flash, select Full erase and install, click Erase Flash and Install Observe the USB drop down without Heltec selection Hold the PRG button, plug in the USB. Observe a quick red flash. Release the PRG button. The USB drop down populates. Select USB JTAG. Click Connect. Observe the terminal and flash process After it says leaving, press the RST button The USB port on the Heltec V4 appears to be less reliable, generally, than that on the V3.2. A laptop and USB cables that worked more or less reliably before suffer now. I use a bash script with CLI over USB to configure the basics, including IP address, then CLI over WiFi for the rest. I use both —timeout and sleep commands not to overwork the device.
This is the normal process for native USB ESP32-S3 devices. In the V4, they dropped the CP2102 usb to serial converter which automatically puts the esp32 into bootloader mode and went with the build in USB/JTAG mode of the ESP32-S3
Found a much simpler way and you can keep the battery connected!
Plug in USB. Press and hold both buttons at the same time, then release the Reset button (still holding Program). This will reboot strait into boot mode, ready to flash.
Future devices in the MeshCore pipeline are likely to show up at RadioLib (see jgromes.github.io/RadioLib/), “Universal wireless communication library for embedded devices.” This is where you can then see upcoming devices, ones that are getting worked on anyway.