ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi folks,

My problem is that my new ESP-01 module doesn't talk to me at all (Ubuntu 14.04/16.04).

What I've done so far:

I've bought an Amica NodeMCU board, installed the Arduino IDE, installed the ESP portion, compiled the "Hello World" blink sketch, let the IDE transmit it to the NodeMCU and I was very pleased to see the blinking light Well there were a few bumps on that road too, but I managed.

Yesterday the ESP-01 boards arrived. I know, I can't flash them without connecting GPIO0 and GND, but I should be able to get their ID and Flash ID. So, I've installed esptool.py, which after some dots and underscores reported: "A fatal error occurred: Failed to connect to Espressif device: Timed out waiting for packet header"

Doing the same with the NodeMCU board returned its ID.

I've tried two adapters to connect the ESP-01 to USB:

First the one into which you can directly plug the ESP-01 into (yellow connector, fat capacitor in the middle, antenna aimed at the USB connector).

The second one with the 6 horizontal pins, which I've connected via jumper cables and a breadboard to the ESP (yes, I moved the jumper on that board to the 3,3V position and checked the voltage with a multimeter).

In both cases, the power LED is lit, a blue LED is blinking when esptool is writing dots to the screen, and after a few tries the program finishes with the error message mentioned above. I've tried a lower baudrate (-b 9600) - no luck.

I've repeated it with a second ESP-01, same problem.

At this point I'm at a loss. I haven't tried to flash it (because I have to solder some kind of switch to USB interface board). Would there be any point in trying that, if even the basic "who are you" communication fails?

Summary
* Voltage should be stable enough - it can feed the NodeMCU
* Communication works to NodeMCU
* There is some kind communication of communication to the ESP-01 - blue light blinking in the rhythm of esptool communication tries



Thanks

Mike

OK... I'll answer this one myself - for future reference.

For flash_id etc. to work, the device has to be switched into programming mode.

Putting the device into programming mode (GPIO0 to GND during a Reset) doesn't mean that you actually must program it (my mistake, but that's why this is the newbie corner). It simply enables esptool.py to work (among other: flash_id, read_flash, and most of the time write_flash)