How to Enable Silence Mode

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Introduction

Silence mode is a compilation configuration option for ESP-AT firmware that controls the behavior of AT logs (i.e., logs output from the AT log port). It is generally recommended to disable this option. While enabling it may reduce the size of the application firmware, you should prioritize the following two methods for reducing the firmware size:

• In python build.py menuconfig, navigate to Component config > AT to disable the unnecessary AT features.

• Refer to the optimization methods outlined in the Minimizing Binary Size documentation.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Enabling and Disabling Silence Mode

Silence Mode	Advantages	Disadvantages
Disabled (i.e., set to 0, recommended)	Enable logging for some AT functions	The size of the application firmware (esp-at.bin) will increase, potentially exceeding the allocated application partition size in the code and resulting in a compilation failure (refer to compilation failure log).
Enabled (i.e., set to 1, not recommended)	Reduced size of the application firmware (esp-at.bin)	This mode will remove some AT logs and make the CONFIG_LOG_DEFAULT_LEVEL configuration ineffective, preventing AT from outputting logs at the corresponding log levels, which will increase the difficulty of debugging AT functions.

Compilation Failure Log Example:

$ ./build.py build

... (more lines of build ESP-AT)

Generated /path/to/esp-at/build/esp-at.bin
[836/838] cd /path/to/esp-at/build/esp-at.bin
FAILED: esp-idf/esptool_py/CMakeFiles/app_check_size
cd /path/to/esp-at/build/esp-idf/esptool_py && [...]/bin/python /path/to/esp-at/esp-idf/components/partition_table/check_sizes.py --offset 0x8000 partition --type app /path/to/esp-at/build/partition_table/partition-table.bin /path/to/esp-at/build/esp-at.bin
Error: app partition is too small for binary esp-at.bin size 0x135ae0:
  - Part 'ota_0' 0/16 @ 0xd0000 size 0x130000 (overflow 0x5ae0)
ninja: build stopped: subcommand failed.

Configuration

• Enable or disable the silence mode configuration:

  • Compile ESP-AT Project Locally

    Configure the silence mode as No (or Yes) in step 3 Install Environment to disable (or enable) the silence mode.

  • Compile ESP-AT Project on the GitHub Webpage

    Modify the value of silence_mode in the esp-at/.github/workflows/build_template_esp32.yml file in step 5.3 Commit changes to enable or disable the silence mode. For example, to enable silence mode, set it to:

    - name: Configure prerequisites
      run: |
        # set module information
        silence_mode=1
        # set the silence_sdkconfig.defaults file path
        silence_sdkconfig=module_config/module_<your_module_name>/sdkconfig_silence.defaults
        mkdir build
        echo -e "{\"platform\": \"PLATFORM_ESP32\", \"module\": \"${{ inputs.module_name }}\", \"silence\": ${silence_mode}}" > build/module_info.json
    

• Please flash the compiled AT firmware to the module, and then execute the AT+GMR command to confirm whether the enable or disable of silence mode is successful.

  • If silence mode is enabled, the response of the AT+GMR command should include s-, for example:

    AT+GMR
    AT version:3.5.0.0-dev(s-88b4ea4...
    
    ... (more lines of version information)
    
    OK
    

  • If silence mode is disabled, the response of the AT+GMR command should NOT include s-, for example:

    AT+GMR
    AT version:3.5.0.0-dev(88b4ea4...
    
    ... (more lines of version information)
    
    OK
    

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