ESP8266 Community Forum

Kind of a strange idea I'm working on . . . I want to do serial over IR between two ESP12e's. I'm using all the other pins for other things so I wondered about using the hardware UART pins using a circuit similar to this one http://www.zolalab.com.br/references/serial2ir.php . I was planning on have a switch on the RX side so the IR receiver doesn't corrupt all received serial with whatever random IR may be around when I'm programming the ESP8266. I wired up the circuit, but I found the ESP8266 won't boot when I have the IR connected to TX. I'm guessing this has something to do with the IR circuit pulling TX down, but I don't pulling down TX talked about anywhere in the bootup descriptions I've seen. Any ideas? Is this just an all around dumb idea?

Just an idea: the ESP has two UARTS, why not use the second one for your IR?

If there's chance of your TX line being pulled down, always add a small resistor inbetween. Outputs should never get shorted to ground.