ESP8266 Community Forum

- Mon Jul 06, 2015 6:04 am #22556 Ok, so got a little bit farther with this. Still doing my head in though. I switched to my Xubuntu box just to make sure it's not the Mac. So Arduino IDE 1.6.5 and latest ESP board.

So I have these ESP-12 dev boards, the yellow ones (https://austinlightguy.files.wordpress. ... /espxx.jpg). That works fine via the FTDI. No issues at all.

Just my ESP-12 and ESP-12E on a white adapter board doesn't. Connections are:

GND--> GND, FTDI GND
VCC--> 3.3V (LM1117 & 100uF)
CH_PD--> 100Ohm (and 10k as installed on adapter)
GPIO0--> GND (when flashing)
RX-->TX FTDI
TX-->RX FTDI

So the Upload from Arduino IDE looks perfect all flashing lights and dots but when I take GPIO0 to floating and start then nothing happens. Just garbage to the terminal. I did see some Fatal error (0) at some point. I am guessing although it tells me Flashing is underway it actually doesn't and there's nothing to load.

So I am now officially blinkered and need help. Can't see trees for the wood.

Thanks for any help!
Oliver

P.S. I doubt it's power. That seems stable enough (better than the yellow board thingies)

- Mon Jul 06, 2015 1:29 pm #22609 can you read the terminal garbage now it is on linux ?

I still suspect power .. the new chips try to start an AP when the already used chips don't .. I assume this is on a breadboard, it is uploading so at that point the AP has not started, as soon as you reboot without the upload its drawing large currents again.
Yesterday I was mucking around with an ESP12 that I have used, I had no hassles on, as soon as I changed to a brand new ESP01 on the breadboard the exact same software started rebooting immediately until I soldered a 220u cap to the actual module pins.
Then my software disabled the access point and since then it has been up for 2 days straight, I bet I could remove the cap now if I wanted to.

I dunno, just 99% of any problems I have had have been related to the power required and the arduino IDE just fails to upload if anything is wrong at that stage, it is not failing therefore I would assume it is working and verified.. until you hit the reset button.
I think the only other pita issue I have had was tiny solder dag between GPIO0 and GPIO2 ... you cannot get that to program period..

Soldered wires >> breadboard and you can never have too much decoupling on the rails.
Seriously though, that garbage you are seeing on the terminal is probably giving you some great info if you get the baud rate correct..
I have never connected at 74.5k or whatever it is in reality, only ever used 76800 to check it and not seen a single corrupted text string yet, so I would work with that value personally. The driver may prefer it since it is a 'real' baud rate despite being a legacy one.

- Mon Jul 06, 2015 8:31 pm #22643 Ok. Thanks. I'll give it another shot. I might do the 220uF thing directly to the ESP. I'll also just try and drive it off 3 AA like the other boards. I'll let you know.

- Sun Jul 19, 2015 6:55 pm #23673 Nothing, absolutely nothing is working. The ESP's seem to upload but once I boot them with GPIO0 floating they just print gibberish and that's it. I can't see the content at any baud rate. so either my USB-Serial adapter isn't doing what it should or I haven't got a clue what's happening.

Tried 3 different ESP-12s, batteries or other supplies, different connections to CH_PD,GPIO..., with and without adapters, from a Mac, from a Linux box,... I've now spent 2 weeks on this and nothing. I am getting so frustrated!!!!

Especially since I can take one of these and all is uploading fine!


So what's different? What haven't I looked at?