ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi,

This is my first time with any of this stuff.
I received a NodeMCU ESP8266 today and I plug it into my PC via Micro-USB cable and I get a short LED flash. Thats all.

I gather I need to flash the firmware onto the device before I can start using it, how do I do that?
There is a FLASH and USER button.

What do I do?

Help appreciated

Nick

I suggest you first play a bit with the AT-commands that are in the current (standard) firmware of your NodeMCU.
Just connect your NodeMCU to your computer (and let it install the USB drivers), and open a terminal (like PuTTY) on 115200 baud.
Reset your NodeMCU and you should be able to enter AT-commands (see this page for a reference).

Once you got it working, you can try to compile your own code with, for instance, the Arduino IDE.
For this you can see a small demonstration on Instructables.com.

Are you sure it has a USER-button?
Normally there are only a FLASH end a RESET ("RST") button on the board.

Have fun!

Thanks for reply but when I connect to my PC, it doesn't detect anything, not even an unknown device.

Nick

Hmmm, that's odd.

And if you have a look at your COM-ports, perhaps it's already installed?

Depending on the "Brand" and version of your board, it is possible that your board has a CP2102 instead of a CH340.

I have just taken a brand new and fresh NodeMCU (LoLin v3 from wemos.cc), connected it to my PC (the drivers were already installed) and opened a PuTTY-window on COM4 at 115200 baud.

Then, on the prompt, I entered "AT+GMR" followed by CTRL+M and CTRL+J and this was the result: