ESP8266 Community Forum

You do not need to explicitly select ESPtool as the programmer any more. Just Upload like you normally would and it will work. In other words., you do not need to think about esptool. It just works...

Thank you for everyone!
I could write sketch without esptool (by default AVRASP mkII).
But, sometime failed.
So, you should ESP8266 reset LOW=>HIGH or PowerOFF=>PowerON.

@FlyingHacker

That said, upgrading from 1.5.something to 1.6.5 was the start of my problems. I am new to this forum and more importantly, new to Arduino and ESP programming. I struggled to get the IDE installed satisfactorily with 1.5.x, then I started with the ESP8266-12 modules and needed to add ESPTool. Eventually all was well and I have been developing and flashing up to 4 boards quite happily with 1.5.x and ESPtool as many as 5 - 10 times a day. 2 Boards are sat chatting to an Arduino Mega2560, but the other 2 are continually flashed with software mods.

I decided now to explored OneWire devices and in the process of adding OneWire and Dallas libraries I thought it would be good to update to 1.6.5 with a core that included some of the ESP library wherewithall I'd need. Everything continued fine until one day I connected the Mega2560 board to the laptop top program, up until then it had always been connected to my desktop using 1.6.5. At this point, selecting board as Mega created a number of options in the <Tools> menu ... Flash Mode, Flash Frequency, Upload Frequency, and Flash Size I don't ever recall seeing before. and installing the IDE core means that my ESPTool has gone.

I then found that uploading creates regular errors of incorrect connection for TX/RX or port unavailable. Tried installing ESPTool.py but that didn't improve matters and I doubt that it was the means of uploading.

Since then things have gone from bad to worse as I created a new Ubuntu install and added Arduino 1.6.5 IDE and the necessary libraries to find that uploading was instantly successful but the sketch does not run. Using a second working board gave the exact same outcome after the firat flah so now I have (possibly) 2 non functioning ESP boards. What's going on? Is it the recent IDE or libraries? Could it be the built-in substitute ESPTool that is flawed? I'm afraid this is outside my capabilities, but maybe some out there can shed some light ... maybe abandon the IDE for a different development/programming application.

Just to add something else that came to mind last night. There is a distinct difference between the way ESPTool uploaded to the board and what I am seeing now.

When uploading I used to see that ESPTool uploaded in 2 bites. I can't remember the info that appeared as it uploaded but there were 2 distinct address blocks and 2 lines of dots printed to the screen. The new installation that doesn't work uploads in 1 block and prints dots in 1 block. I don't know if that is significant but it is different.