ESP8266 Community Forum

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

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.

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:



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

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.