ESP8266 Community Forum

- Wed Dec 27, 2017 1:56 pm #72738 Hi,
First time user and first time poster here. I am using Ubuntu 16.04.
My ESP8266 arrived in the mail yesterday. I found the ESP8266 as /dev/ttyUSB0 using the Arduino Serial Monitor. I pressed the Reset button on the ESP8266 and received in the Arduino Serial Monitor the message:

Code: Select allNodeMCU 0.9.5 build 20150318  powered by Lua 5.1.4
lua: cannot open init.lua


which is what I understand I am supposed to be geting.

I realise that I cannot use the Arduino Serial Monitor to send commands to the ESP8266 as the CRLF is not correct (or non-existent I believe).

So I opened a terminal and typed in:

Code: Select allscreen /dev/ttyUSB0

However screen just terminates with the message:

Code: Select all[screen is terminating]

What am I doing wrong? How can I get this to work?

- Fri Dec 29, 2017 6:40 am #72766 Can't confirm but better try with sudo

- Fri Dec 29, 2017 10:55 am #72767 in Ubuntu a user must be a member of the group 'dialout' to access serial ports. Using 'sudo' just bypasses security, and is not good practice. Add yourself to the dialout group like:

Code: Select allsudo adduser $USER dialout

You will have to logout and back in for the group change to be used.

Also, you might find 'minicom' to be a more user-friendly terminal program.

- Fri Dec 29, 2017 8:27 pm #72776 I double checked, my username is already a member of dialout.

Also checking out minicom now.