ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi, newb here, hoping someone can help.

I've installed the recommended CH340G serial driver, it's detected fine as COM8 (Windows 7 btw), I connected via PuTTY, and the only thing it'll give me is the bootloader message on reset (which only appears as non-gibberish at 74880 baud):



It accepts no input (i tried a few AT commands - nothing, not even an echo back), and I also tried at other baud rates such as 9600 and 115200.

I googled a bit and found the following suggestions:

• Use an external power supply
- I grabbed my bench supply and tried it with that on both the 5V pin (labelled Vin on the LoLin board) and 3.3V pins, no change.

• The CH340 chips are often unreliable
- I happen to have a 2102 FTDI UART-USB interface, so hooked that up. Detected as COM7, but no change.
- I should also mention I made sure the FTDI interface and bench supply had common ground.

• Try ESPlorer- Also tried a few other baud rates for good measure: same response, but with added gibberish characters on the end.

• Reflash the firmware
- Cloned and built esptool
- Created a firmware .bin using that cloud build service (can't remember the URL, i'm sure you guys know the one) - I get the same when trying any esptool commands, regardless of whether it's externally powered and for either the CH340 or FTDI interface.
- HOWEVER, during the connection attempts the blue LED on the ESP8266 blinks a few times, suggesting it's aware something is going on.

At all stages I've used a multimeter to check continuity (I also checked to make sure my FTDI interface Tx/Rx was 3.3V and not 5V), and tried various combinations of serial interface, baud rates, power sources, and now I'm at a loss.

There's clearly something working on the ESP8266 as it does send that 1 line of data across the serial link on a reset, and there's that blinking LED when esptool tries to connect suggesting it can receive as well (although for all i know it could just be issuing a reset to the Rst pin over and over).

Anyone have any further tests I can do?

Toggle DTR and RTS I am assuming you are using LUA frightitanic build.

Possibly give espbasic a try it does the same things with less code typically people just want to switch things on and off or dim things with these devices not to say that other things cant be done like reading temps controlling things with IR etc but espbasic has many advantages very little disadvantages for most users.

Look for mmiscool espbasic or visit esp8266basic.com

Anyways hope this helps you on your quest.

Try the Getting Started With NodeMcu V3 Module post just below. Same module on Win7.

Thanks for the advice, although I think this NodeMCU module may just be a duff one. I've no idea what firmware it's running, and currently have no way of getting any other on it.

I got another in the post today that i'd ordered from a different seller - just an ESP8266 on it's own rather than a NodeMCU board this time - hooked it up using my FTDI interface and it's accepting AT commands fine, advertising itself as a WiFi network, etc.

I got the NodeMCU as I figured it'd be easier to get started with, but I think i'll just continue on with this other ESP8266 as it appears to actually work.