EvoScan Port 4.0 Firmware Flasher – User Guide

Everything the flasher does, in the order you’ll meet it, plus what to do when something goes wrong.

You only ever run the flasher once per device. After that the EvoScan Port 4.0 updates itself over the air and you never need a laptop again.

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1. What you need

Hardware

Item	Notes
Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-S3 (Pre-Soldered)	The only supported board. See the warning below.
CAN Bus Breakout Board for XIAO	Fits the XIAO, connects to the car’s CAN bus.
2.4 GHz rod antenna	Screws onto the small connector on the XIAO. Not optional in practice. Seeed lists it under a “for XIAO ESP32C3” title — that’s fine, same connector, it fits the ESP32-S3.
12/24 V → 5 V converter with USB-C	In-car power, wired to a full-time battery feed.
T1 orange T-tap crimp terminals	For tapping the CAN and power wires.
Data-capable USB-C cable	Charge-only cables are the single most common cause of “no device detected”.

Every one of these has a clickable buy link in the flasher’s Parts List section.

PC

• Windows 10/11, 64-bit.
• A working internet connection — the flasher will not run offline (see §3).
• WiFi hardware on the PC helps but isn’t essential; it’s used to test your network credentials before they’re sent to the device.

Account

• An evoscan.com account with at least one available licence. Check at https://evoscan.com/my-account/ or with the Check login button in the flasher.

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2. Before you plug anything in

• 2.4 GHz WiFi only. The ESP32-S3 has no 5 GHz radio. If your router broadcasts one SSID for both bands you’re usually fine; if 5 GHz is a separate SSID, use the 2.4 GHz one.
• Close anything else that talks to serial ports — Arduino IDE, PuTTY, Tera Term, CoolTerm, RealTerm, PlatformIO, an idf_monitor window. The flasher can kill these for you, but it’s cleaner not to have them open.
• Know which board you’re flashing. Flashing permanently pairs that board with your account and uses one licence. It cannot be undone or moved to a different board afterwards.

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3. Launching — the update gate

The flasher opens on a small “EvoScan Flasher — Updates” window before it shows you anything else.

This is deliberate: the flasher makes permanent changes to your hardware and allocates licences against live servers, so an out-of-date build isn’t just inconvenient — it could set a board up wrongly, for good. If it can’t confirm it’s the current release, it will not open.

What you see	What to do
“EvoScan Flasher x.y.z is up to date.”	Nothing — the main window opens in half a second.
“A newer version is required.”	Click Update Now. It downloads, verifies the checksum, swaps itself out and relaunches automatically.
“Cannot verify that this is the latest version.”	You’re offline, or a firewall/proxy is in the way. Connect the PC to the internet and click Retry.

If it shows a security warning about the update itself, stop. Don’t work around it — download the flasher again from evoscan.com, ideally on a different network.

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4. The main window, section by section

EvoScan.com Account

Enter the email or username and password you use at https://evoscan.com/my-account/. The eye icon reveals the password.

Your email is remembered between sessions. Your password is never written to disk — you re-type it each session, on purpose, so there’s no credential blob sitting on your laptop.

Check login (optional but recommended) validates your credentials and shows your licence position:

• Available Licenses — how many devices you can still flash. This is the one that matters.
• Total Licences, Licences Purchased, Licence Transfers Received, Licences Transferred Away, Devices Flashed and Activated.

If Available reads 0, a buy a license link appears next to it.

COM Port

Top-right. Leave it on Auto unless you have a reason not to — the flasher recognises the board and picks the right port automatically.

The dot next to it is your connection indicator:

• 🟢 green — an ESP32 device is detected, and the port name is shown.
• ⚪ grey — no device.

Plug and unplug are detected live; you don’t need to restart the app or press anything. Every port that appears or disappears is noted in the log.

WiFi Credentials

The dropdown is pre-loaded with every WiFi network already saved on this PC, plus everything visible in a live scan. Pick one and the password fills in automatically from Windows’ own saved profile. Or just type an SSID and password manually — the box is editable.

Scan Again re-scans (takes a few seconds) and reports how many live and saved networks it found.

This is the network the device will join — it does not have to be the one your laptop is using. A phone hotspot is a perfectly good choice; see §7.

Flash to Device

The big button. Covered in detail in §5.

Parts List

Five buttons that open the exact products you need in your browser. Prices are shown on the buttons.

Log panel

Colour-coded, timestamped, and the single most useful thing you can send me if something goes wrong.

• Clear — empties it.
• Copy — copies the whole log to the clipboard. Paste this into any support message.
• Send WiFi to Device — see §8.
• View after Flashed — opens https://evoscan.local/ in your browser.

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5. Flashing, step by step

Plug the blank Seeed Studio XIAO ESP32-S3 (Pre-Soldered) into USB, fill in the four fields, and press Flash to Device. A race-track progress bar appears and the whole thing takes roughly 4–6 minutes. Here’s what’s happening behind each phase.

1. Probing the device

The flasher checks whether the board is blank or already set up.

• If it’s already flashed, you get a Device Already Flashed dialog showing the device details, firmware version and WiFi status, with the option to Send WiFi instead. This is normal on a device that’s already been through the process — not a fault.
• If the port is locked by another program, you get a Port In Use dialog listing the offending processes with an End Tasks button that kills them for you.

2. Finishing an interrupted setup (if applicable)

If an earlier attempt got part-way through and didn’t finish registering, the flasher picks up where it left off — provided you’ve plugged the same board back in. Plug in a different board and it will tell you, and skip, so one board’s setup is never completed against another. Reconnect the original board to finish it.

3. Licence check

Authenticates with evoscan.com and checks your licence. Three ways this can stop:

• No available licences → buy one at https://evoscan.com/shop
• Device registered to a different account → that board belongs to someone else and cannot be re-flashed to you.
• Device Already registered to you → fine, proceeds as normal.

4. WiFi test

The flasher briefly connects your PC to the SSID/password you entered and pings the internet, to catch typos before they’re baked into the device. It then puts your PC back on the network it was using.

Your laptop will drop off its current WiFi for ~10 seconds here. That’s expected. If you’re on a Remote Desktop session, don’t be surprised.

If the test fails you get a Confirm WiFi Details dialog with a clickable list of nearby networks, editable SSID/password boxes, the full connection guide, and Copy to clipboard / Print buttons. You can correct the details, or click Continue to use them anyway — useful when the target network (a hotspot, or the car’s garage WiFi) isn’t in range of the laptop right now.

5. Device setup — the irreversible bit

The device permanently establishes its own secure identity and is registered against your evoscan.com account. This step cannot be undone, reversed or re-run.

The flasher stores what it needs to finish the job before it makes any permanent change, so if something goes wrong here the setup can be completed later rather than leaving you with a dead board (see phase 2).

Do not unplug the device during this phase.

6. Writing the firmware

The firmware is written to the board, which then restarts and secures itself. That first restart takes up to a minute, and the device disappears from Windows while it happens — sometimes coming back on a different COM port. The flasher waits for it and handles the change. This is normal.

7. WiFi handoff

Your WiFi details are passed to the device over the USB cable. It confirms them and connects.

8. Encrypted firmware download

This is the long part — allow about 4 minutes. The device contacts EvoScan’s servers itself and downloads the full licensed firmware over a secure connection. The flasher shows live progress, and a http://evoscan.local link appears if you’d rather watch from a browser.

If the device goes quiet near the end, that’s normal — it means the download finished and it restarted into the new firmware.

9. HTTPS certificate + dashboard

The device has its own certificate so the dashboard can load securely. The flasher fetches and installs it for you — this may take a few attempts while the device finishes restarting and rejoins WiFi — so https://evoscan.local opens without a browser scare page.

Windows will show a security prompt asking you to confirm you trust this certificate. Click Yes. That prompt is Windows doing its job — there is no silent way around it, and there shouldn’t be.

Your browser then opens on the dashboard, and a Provisioning Complete dialog appears with the connection guide, plus Copy to clipboard and Print buttons. Print it and keep it with the device.

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6. After flashing — wiring it into the car

1. Plug the flashed XIAO ESP32-S3 into the CAN Bus Breakout Board, and screw on the 2.4 GHz antenna.
2. Wire the 12/24 V → 5 V converter into a full-time battery wire; 5 V out into the bare-wire USB-C plug; USB-C into the XIAO.
3. Wire the CAN Breakout Board into the high-speed EvoX / Ralliart internal CAN bus on the side of the steering column — not the slower external OBD port.

The device is designed to stay in the car permanently.

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7. Four ways to reach the device

Method	How
Home / office WiFi	The device auto-joins the network you entered during flashing. From a phone on that same network, use the Service Browser app (by Andriy Druk, Google Play) to find the _tcp.local IP, then paste that IP into Chrome.
Phone hotspot	Turn on your phone’s hotspot using the SSID and password you entered during flashing. The device joins it automatically. Find it with Service Browser, open the IP in Chrome. Your phone keeps working normally for WhatsApp/Messenger at the same time.
The device’s own WiFi	Connect to EvoScanRaceComputer, password EvoScanRace123. Then browse to http://192.168.4.1 or http://evoscan.local.
Recovery mode (if flashing ever fails)	Connect to EvoScanSetup, password EvoScanSetup123, then http://192.168.4.1 or http://evoscan.local.

Can’t reach it on any of them? Fit the external antenna. Plug the supplied 2.4 GHz antenna into the small connector on the XIAO, power-cycle the device and try again. Range and reliability are dramatically better with it attached — this is the fix far more often than anything else on this page.

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8. Changing the WiFi later — “Send WiFi to Device”

If you move house, change routers, or want the device on a different hotspot:

1. Plug the device into USB.
2. Enter the new SSID and password in the WiFi Credentials section.
3. Click Send WiFi to Device in the log panel header.

The device accepts the new credentials, reboots and reconnects. Nothing is re-flashed and no licence is consumed. The same option is offered automatically if you press Flash to Device on a board that’s already provisioned.

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9. Troubleshooting

Symptom	Cause / fix
“No ESP32 device detected”	Charge-only USB cable (very common — try another), device not plugged in, or a driver that hasn’t enumerated yet. Unplug, wait 3 seconds, plug back in.
“Could not read device MAC address”	Same causes as above, plus another app holding the port.
“Port in use” dialog	Something else has the COM port open. Click End Tasks to let the flasher close the usual suspects (PuTTY, Tera Term, Arduino, PlatformIO, CoolTerm, RealTerm…), or close it manually and retry.
“Could not connect to network. Check the password.”	Wrong WiFi password, 5 GHz-only SSID, or the network is out of range of the laptop. You can click Continue to use the credentials anyway if you know they’re right.
“You have no available licenses”	Buy one at https://evoscan.com/shop, or transfer one to yourself from another account at https://evoscan.com/my-account/
“This device is already registered to another user’s account”	That board is bound to someone else. It can’t be re-provisioned to you.
“Device provisioned but not registered”	This board was set up on an earlier attempt that never finished registering, and the flasher can no longer complete it on its own. Contact support and include the log.
Registration failed during setup	Leave the same board plugged in and run the flasher again — it finishes the job automatically.
Firmware download seems stuck	Give it the full 4 minutes. Check the antenna is fitted and the device is in WiFi range. Watch progress directly at http://evoscan.local.
Browser warns about the certificate at https://evoscan.local	The certificate install was skipped or declined. Visit http://evoscan.local/cert in a browser and install it manually.
Flasher won’t open — “cannot verify latest version”	It’s offline or blocked by a firewall/proxy. Connect to the internet and click Retry.

When asking for help: click Copy in the log panel and paste the whole log into your message. It has everything needed to diagnose the problem — the port, the device details, your licence counts and every error message — almost always enough to sort it out in one round trip.

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10. Licences, in plain English

• One licence = one device, permanently bound to that individual board.
• Not locked to a VIN. Unlimited vehicles — move the device between cars freely.
• Licences can be transferred to another user from https://evoscan.com/my-account/, and transfers in and out are shown in the flasher’s licence summary.
• Firmware updates over the air are encrypted and licence-checked — a device has to prove it is itself before an update will install, so the firmware can’t be copied onto an unlicensed board.

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11. What the flasher keeps on your PC

Very little, all of it under your own Windows user profile: your EvoScan email or username so you don’t retype it, and a small amount of housekeeping the app needs between runs.

Your password is never stored. You enter it each session, deliberately, so it’s not stored on your laptop.

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Quick reference card

Device WiFi ............ EvoScanRaceComputer  /  EvoScanRace123
Recovery WiFi .......... EvoScanSetup         /  EvoScanSetup123
Device address ......... http://evoscan.local   or   http://192.168.4.1
Dashboard (post-flash) . https://evoscan.local
Certificate (manual) ... http://evoscan.local/cert
Your account ........... https://evoscan.com/my-account/
Buy licences ........... https://evoscan.com/shop
Phone discovery app .... "Service Browser" by Andriy Druk (Google Play)