ESP8266 Community Forum

I've worked on this for weeks and can't even get this thing working to begin with.

I have an esp8266 Huzzah on a breadboard with the FTDI cable to a powered USB hub and plugged in to the motherboard's ports, and have closed or removed all peripherals from Windows 10, including Bluetooth and all virtual drives.

I have used Putty and the Arduino IDE. It's difficult to follow a lot of these setup guides because everyone's got a different thing, but the best I can do with Putty except a blank screen is I get a little bit of gibberish on the command screen whenever I press the reset button but that's it. No input is possible.

Most advice I see is "Use Arduino IDE, it's easier," so on the Arduino IDE, I the best I get are communication errors, basically "warning: espcomm_sync failed," "error: espcomm_open failed" and "error: espcomm_upload_mem failed." Otherwise it's a whole slew of java errors and whatnot that I correct by reverting the parameters back to what they were.

I've tried older versions of Arduino IDE, made sure the current FTDI driver is installed, restarted a billion times, connected the 8266 to its own power source, done the thing with the Additional Boards Manager, nothing gets better, just worse. Can anyone help me out? Assistance would be greatly appreciated. I'll be happy to copy any needed info.

Are you using the Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266?

You should be able to connect that with just a standard USB cable. No need for FTDI. I believe they come preloaded with the blink programme. Huzzah has two built in LEDs, one red, one blue. Do you see either flashing if you just power the unit by connecting the USB output of your computer with the USB input on the feather?

That'll tell you if the board is fried. Assuming its not, your post seems to be along the approach I'd give.

Do you have https://www.silabs.com/products/mcu/Pag ... ivers.aspx installed?
I'm on a Mac, so can't be too specific, but in my Arduino IDE I see the port in the Tools | Ports menu.

When I fly out the port selection, I see /dev/cu_SLAB_USBtoUART as soon as I connect via USB. Set the upload speed to 115200 (also in the Tools menu) and it just works.

Not sure if I've helped. If you can try the above and post where it doesn't work, hopefully someone else can jump in with a response that'll fit your specifics.

https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-fea ... rduino-ide is a pretty good resource.

Andy.