ESP8266 Community Forum

- Mon Jun 01, 2015 2:20 pm #19150 Hi!

I just got my first ESP8266 today and started playing with it.
I am able to communicate with it threw the arduino, but I can't do it threw FTDI.
I am using the FTDI 232r with 3.3v output. When I connect the FTDI the the USB I can see the ESP is powered (red led on) and working (my wifi adapter finds the ESP acsses point), but I cant find a serial port to communicate with it. When I connect only the FTDI without the ESP, I can find it serial port.
Any ideas of what the problem is?

Thanks,
GG

- Mon Jun 01, 2015 4:30 pm #19157 Which ESP8266 variant?

I am guessing you either have the esp8266 connections wrong in some way.
My favorite idea: Check that they share a common ground. Because the port disappears when both FTDI and ESP8266 are "on", I am voting for a ground issue. However, maybe it's pulling too much power and keeping the FTDI from operating well enough to be recognized as a functioning port to the PC.

If you have an ESP8266 dev board that is taking 5V-12V in and converting it down as needed, make sure that you have not accidentally pulled one of the ESP lines to the wrong (higher) voltage.

- Tue Jun 02, 2015 12:45 am #19184 Thank you for the answer
I'm using the ESP-01.
The ground was common when I tried to connect it the first time.
I tried to use external power source and it solved the original problem - now I can see the serial port and communicate with the ESP! (I know that powering the ESP from USB is problematic, though its weird that when I try to power arduino+ESP it works fine but FTDI+ESP doesn't...)
But there is a new problem: When I'm trying to restart the ESP using the AT+RST command, the device goes off and comes back to life only when I disconnect and reconnect it to the power source and FTDI. Further more, when the ESP is on, I cant connect to access points and the ESP access point does not exists. everything is very unstable, and when I try the same thing twice I might get different results.

Here is the message I get after trying to restart the ESP:

Code: Select allAT+RST


OK

 ets Jan  8 2013,rst cause:4, boot mode:(3,7)

wdt reset
load 0x40100000, len 816, room 16
tail 0
chksum 0x8d
load 0x3ffe8000, len 788, room 8
tail 12
chksum 0xcf
ho 0 tail 12 room 4
load 0x3ffe8314, len 288, room 12
tail 4
chksum 0xcf
csum 0xcf

2nd boot version : 1.2
  SPI Speed      : 40MHz
  SPI Mode       : QIO
  SPI Flash Size : 4Mbit
jump to run user1

Fatal exception (0):
epc1=0x4020c9a0, epc2=0x00000000, epc3=0x00000000, excvaddr=0x00000000, depc=0x00000000


Any help would be much appreciated.
GG

EDIT:
I found that some people had similar issues due to power supply problems. I'm using the YwRobot MB-102, that should give up to 700 mA. Anyone here had used it before?
Another thing that I found is that when the ESP is still cool (low temprature) it works fine and after about a minute of working it gets to hot and all the unstable fenomena begins... Is it normal for the ESP and the power supply board to get quite hot after a minute work?

EDIT 2:
Well, turns out that the temprature is the problem. I found that if I direct a fan on the system it keeps it cool and everything works perfect. So now the question is why is the system gets too hot? had anyone had a simillar problem before?

EDIT 3 (and hopefully last for this thread)
I think problem is solved
The fualt was in the power suplly. The 3.3 voltage regulator on the MB-102 was extremely over hitted. That was because I used 12V input to the board, and as I learned today on the hard way, too much voltage difference is not healthy. I changed the input to 3V - that was too low, and then to 4.5 V - and for now everything looks good

- Wed Jun 03, 2015 11:04 pm #19414 I am using the same power supply but with a 9v input. All components seem to run cool and stable.

My ESP07 and 01 both run cool as well under this setup.