ESP8266 Community Forum

Good to know. But, with the ESP8266 modules I have not flashed (that still have AT commands available), I can run off the FTDI with no problems. I can list the available AP's and connect and get an address via DHCP. Does that mean that my FTDI _is_ putting out enough current?

Still, there seems to be way too many parameters that you have to get exactly right to be able to use these boards. Some resources say I should be flashing in DIO SPI mode, some QIO, some say that I should actually specify the 8285 chipset. So many choices - all conflicting.

Is there anyway I can copy the firmware from a working board (that still has AT available) and flash these non-working boards?

I added a breadboard PSU to power both 3.3V power rails and wired everything up. And I put the FTDI on the same breadboard and wired the RX/TX to the 8266. So the 8266 is getting it's main VCC and GND from the power rails.

I can still flash and when I unplug the USB from the FTDI, and reset the 8266 board, still no luck.

Thanks for all your assistance.

Well, I now know the board is not fried. I was able to upload ESPEasy to the board on the first try. So it is possible to flash the board to do something useful.

What I still do not know is how to reset the board back to accepting AT commands.

SOLVED!

I downloaded the esptool.py utility which has an option to READ firmware. So I found a 8266 board that I had not flashed yet (that still had the AT commands enabled), read the firmware, then wrote it to one of the boards that did not work:

esptool.py -p COM9 -b 115200 read_flash 0 0x200000 flash.bin

Then I loaded the firmware into the non-working board using esptool.exe:

esptool.exe -vv -cd nodemcu -cb 115200 -cp COM9 -ca 0x00000 -cf flash.bin

Silly way to do this, but it finally worked! Thanks for all your support.