Use this forum to chat about hardware specific topics for the ESP8266 (peripherals, memory, clocks, JTAG, programming)

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By sej7278
#7619
gwizz wrote:OK - fair enough - is it that soldering to the flash pins is much more do-able than soldering to the fine pitch esp pins directly?

Anyway, top marks for doing it, didn't mean to sound negative :)


yes i'd like to know why too - surely its more straightforward to use the gpio pins directly (no software mods) or is it just because its easier to solder to the flash that the smd package?
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By Adex
#7632 A lot easier is to solder to flash pads.
Soldering to QFN pads is way more difficult.

My hack doesn't require software mods, only need to change one byte in firmware or use other than esptool.py flashing tool (like ESP DOWNLOAD TOOL).
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By teddyz
#26834 Tested OK with Arduino IDE. Be sure to flash using DIO, as flashing with QIO does not work (obviously) but also gives no error message. Thanks for the idea!

So, now I can use these, and also TX-pin as GPIO1 and RX as GPIO3.

I also managed to solder GPIO5 to a wire. But either did adding solder make a shortcut to the ground plane under ESP or did heat or ESD make an internal shortcut to ground. I guess this was no good idea. :)