-->
Page 1 of 2

Why does ESP8266 show 'Garbage' characters?

PostPosted: Wed Nov 23, 2016 4:19 pm
by AcmeUK
Many newcomers complain that when they boot the esp8266 all they see is 'Garbage'!

This is because the the esp 8266 boot ROM runs at 74880 Baud.

Many people complain at the 'choice' of 74880; well there is a technical reason for it.

From here https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/e ... fzemznBQAJ (See the post from Angus Gratton at top of page)

I found this explanation
On reset, ESP8266 hardware default baud rate depends on the crystal choice. With a 40MHz crystal you get 115200bps. With a 26MHz crystal you get proportionally less, 74880bps (115200*26/40). Almost everyone (including Espressif) ships hardware with a 26MHz crystal, so almost everyone gets 74880bps by default.

One problem is that some terminals do not support the 74880 Baud rate. To overcome this I use Coolterm. For details see this post http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=32&t=2664&hilit=+coolterm

Hope this helps.

(I have reposted this information here so that Newbies can find it) :)

Re: Why does ESP8266 show 'Garbage' characters?

PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 12:10 am
by RichardS
Thanks!

This is 100% however those characters are not important, never cared, but its nice to know why.....

RichardS

Re: Why does ESP8266 show 'Garbage' characters?

PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 3:30 am
by eduperez
From my personal experience, I would add that another possible cause for garbage on the serial line is a bad power supply; specifically, trying to feed the ESP from the 3.3v on a FTDI.

Re: Why does ESP8266 show 'Garbage' characters?

PostPosted: Thu Nov 24, 2016 9:56 pm
by Christer Gustavsson
I might have a similar problem. Now that said, i have only had my first ESP12 unit a couple of hours. Painful hours. I have googled lots of "how to"'s and "getting started"'s and they all have different tools, downloads and baud rates. Baud rates seem all random to me - is it really that bad? I have seen everything from 9600 to 200000-something.

The esptool.py did not complain uploading the 0.9.6 float fw. It even said it auto detected 32M flash. When i connect a terminal at 115200 per the example that look most successful this far, i get a load of garbage that end in MEM CHECK FAIL!!!

I like the classic arduino where everything just work and where i can concentrate on my project - not chasing baudrates. On this platform the lua stuff looked cleanest but i'm not there yet.

Is there any howto of good quality that is up to date and that really will take me there? To the lua prompt?