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By stephencadams
#80730 I have a ESP-01 board running under softwareserial library (as the Uno does not have a dedicated serial port for the 8266 board).
I understand I can program it using AT commands with the internal software that comes in the ESP board.
I have successfully produced programs which work with the ESP board using AT commands.

I also know you can program the chip with a new instruction set, based on the Arduino IDE, ie an Arduino program can be loaded on to the ESP chip memory and run without the Arduino being present.

But every example I have seen of programming uses the serial port on pins 0 & 1, which are attached to the USB port on the Uno, so are not available to me!

None of the programming libraries allow me to use softwareserial to select a serial port.

I am using softwareserial to create ports on pins 11 & 12, how can I program the ESP chip using these pins?
I understand that the RST and IO0 ports have to be grounded in sequence, to program the chip, which is already connected to pins 11 &12.

This can be done be the Ardunio, making programming easy, but no one has demonstrated a working programmer. They either use FDIL, USB ports or remove the IDE chip, all of which seem unnecessary, if I already have a working system!

Noone can explain how you can transfer code already compiled through the Arduino IDE, to the ESP chip memory. Code can be separately compiled to a windows directory, so choosing which chip to compile it to should not be a problem.

Also if you can program a chip with a new instruction set, you should be able to download the old one to a file on the windows computer, using Arduino.

This backup would prevent the problems some people have had with programming, when it has not worked and they cannot re-load their original AT command set.

Please help with an explanation as to how to achieve this.
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By stephencadams
#80743 From what I can see on the Wiki:-
Flashing not done from Ardunio, but from underlying operating system!
That's why it needs the operating systems COM port, and why only the onboard USB is used to program it (it is the only bit the operating system can see of Ardunio board).
The Flashing program as provided by espressif uses Windows, Lynux or Mac, not Ardunio.
The libraries produced by the Board Manager (including the ESP8266) are also operating system specific, they do no work on the Ardunio, only the serial port.
So a Serial port developed by the Ardunio board (SoftwareSerial) is not recognised.
The UNO only has one serial port and I am reluctant to give this up, just to program code on to one chip, which will then be operating on its own (hopefully).
I do want to use it to monitor the progress of the programming, change things like the load address, so the AT commands can be kept in place, rather than destroyed in the process. They are only 295kb.
I can then use the Arduino for other purposes as a computer!
So everything has to be portable and removable.