Did you use the ESP directly or drive it with an external MCU?
The problem may be that I'm using the ESP as a tunnel to echo the commands, its not the ESP itself giving them. Ie. I am not programming the ESP itself, rather an Arduino that is then sending to ESP to be sent out to GoPro.
In the above case I'm just echoing whatever I write into the Serial Monitor.
I can't find many examples where the external MCU is doing the work. Most seem to program the ESP directly from Arduino IDE via FTDI, but due to the lack of GPIO and processing power, I basically just need the ESP as a WiFi antenna.