Downloading and installing the new Arduino IDE for ESP8266

Moderator: igrr

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By Trillium2
#31588 @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.
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By Trillium2
#31636 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.