Fixing the Arduino IDE for the ESP32/ESP8266 on Ubuntu 20.04

Koen Vervloesem

2020-09-07 20:09

If you want to use the Arduino IDE with an ESP32 or ESP8266 microcontroller on Ubuntu 20.04, you get the following error when compiling your sketch:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/koan/.arduino15/packages/esp32/tools/esptool_py/2.6.1/esptool.py", line 37, in <module>
      import serial
      ImportError: No module named serial

This is because esptool.py is called as a Python 2 program, and Python 2 is deprecated. Ubuntu 20.04 doesn't even have pip anymore for Python 2, so you can't even install the serial module to solve this error.

There are two solutions to this problem: using Python 3 or Python 2.

Installing the module for Python 3

One solution is to create a symlink from /usr/bin/python to /usr/bin/python3. Ubuntu even has a package for this:

$ sudo apt install python-is-python3

After this install the pyserial module:

$ pip3 install pyserial

If you already have the serial module, you have to remove it first:

$ pip3 uninstall serial

After this, try compiling your sketch again. This time the Arduino IDE calls esptool.py with Python 3, and thus finds the module you just installed with pip3.

Installing the module for Python 2

Another solution is to keep using Python 2 and thus installing the missing module with pip2. First enable the universe repository, where Python 2 has been moved to in Ubuntu 20.04:

$ sudo add-apt-repository universe

Update your package list, install Python 2 if you don't have it (it's not included anymore by default in new Ubuntu installations, but the Arduino IDE would have shown you another error in that case) and then pip2:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install python2
$ curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py --output get-pip.py
$ python2 get-pip.py

Then finally install the missing module:

$ pip2 install pyserial

After this, try compiling your sketch again. The Arduino IDE still calls esptool.py with Python 2, but this time it finds the module you just installed with pip2, so the error disappears.