Summary

With modern ESPxxx boards switching to native USB , and less reliance on 3rd party UART drivers I think it is a good time to implement a better detection if a device is likely to have an MCU of the ESP32 or ESP8266 femilies

This PR adds:

• a list of VIDs-PIDs that require "ESP-Handling" on Windows.
• this list can be extended through the mpremote configuration file
  when connecting to a decices port on Windows - mpremote can check if it needs ESP-Handling - and then act accordingly
  if / when needed new vids/pids can be added to the default list via PRs, and included in the next release
  personal / interim changes can be done by editing the mpremote config file.

In this draft the detection is based on a list of 4-tuples,
Current implementation only used the VID and PID to identify ,
the vendor could be used if if there is a need to extend matches.

The list of VIDs and PIDs has been gathered through

• inspection and testing of some devices
• documentation research on the internet

user configuration:

the user configuration allows to add additional PID/VIDs.
currently overriding the built-in list is not implemented

#config.py - mpremote configuration file 

esp_detection = [
    # chipset , VID, PID, Vendor
    ("CP2102 / CP2104", 0x10C4, 0xEA60, "Silicon Labs"),
    ( "foobar" , 0xFFFFF, 0xFFFFF, "Unknown")
]

Testing

Manual testing can be done by attaching devices and running the following script:

from mpremote.transport_serial import is_esp_device
import serial.tools.list_ports

ports = serial.tools.list_ports.comports()
for port in ports:
    if port.vid is None:
        continue
    print(f"{port.device} {port.vid:04x}:{port.pid:04x} {port.description} - {"ESP device" if is_esp_device(port.device) else "Non-ESP device"}")

Positive identification of:

• Espressif USB-CDC
  • COM8 303a:1001 USB Serial Device (COM8) - ESP device. - ESP32-C3
  • COM18 303a:1001 USB Serial Device (COM18) - ESP32-C3 Mini device
  • COM21 303a:4001 USB Serial Device (COM21) - ESP device - ESP32-S3
  • COM14 303a:4001 USB Serial Device (COM14) - ESP device - ESP32-S2
• CP2102 / CP2104
  • COM17 4292:60000 Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge (COM17) - ESP32 device
• CP210x
  • COM9 10c4:ea60 Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge (COM9) - ESP8266 device
  • COM23 10c4:ea60 Silicon Labs CP210x USB to UART Bridge (COM23) - ESP32 device
• CH340K - COM15 1a86:7522 USB-SERIAL CH340K (COM15) - ESP-C3 UART device
• FT232R / FTDI -
• CH340
  • COM5 1a86:7523 USB-SERIAL CH340 (COM5) - ESP8266 device
  • COM5 1a86:7523 USB-SERIAL CH340 (COM5) - ESP8266 device
• CH341 -
• Prolific PL2303 -
• Microchip MCP2200 -
• CH9102 / CH9102F -
• Pycom -

not detected as ESPxx device.

• rpi pico/picow
• rpi pico2
  • COM26 2e8a:0005 USB Serial Device (COM26) - Non-ESP device
• pimorino pico lipo
• PYBDv1.1
  • COM24 f055:9800 USB Serial Device (COM24) - Non-ESP device
• NRF5240
  • COM25 239a:8029 USB Serial Device (COM25) - Non-ESP device
• Micro:bit v1
  • COM27 0d28:0204 USB Serial Device (COM27) - Non-ESP device
• to test more

Trade-offs and Alternatives

VID/PID versus Vendor name
Up to now the determination was done just based on the Vendor name.
See #9659

Cherry-picking
This PR contains a few cherry-picked commits from other PRs that are required to allow this PR to work.
They should be automatically dropped when this PR is rebased before merging.

Signed-off-by: Jos Verlinde Jos_Verlinde@hotmail.com