ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi,
I bought these from Volumerate:

OPEN-SMART ESP-12 ESP8266 Serial Wi-Fi Wireless Module for Arduino
http://www.volumerate.com/product/esp-1 ... ino-403072


FTDI Basic Program Downloader USB to TTL FT232 for Arduino
http://www.volumerate.com/product/ftdi- ... rds-326431


I have connected these like this:
ESP-12
RX > TFDI TX
TX > TFDI RX
VCC > External 5v 2A power supply
GND > External 5v 2A power supply


First you might think "Why 5v", but that is cause this ESP board has "Working voltage: 4.5V - 5.5V (On-board 3.3v LDO Regulator)".

I connected TFDI to my computer > started puTTy with 115200 and after that powered my ESP and i get this:

ŒpònnäÄ;òn„’ÜäŽbç$ rrpònàÃÜ€à‚ÇÀl€€€
Ai-Thinker Technology Co. Ltd.

So there is life, but it doesn't answer to any AT command, and sometimes when i write something, it gets jibberish like on top of that "Ai-Thinker" text. After this i tried lower baud rate 74880, and i got this:

ets Jan 8 2013,rst cause:2, boot mode:(3,6)

load 0x40100000, len 1856, room 16
tail 0
chksum 0x63
load 0x3ffe8000, len 776, room 8
tail 0
chksum 0x02
load 0x3ffe8310, len 552, room 8
tail 0
chksum 0x79
csum 0x79

2nd boot version : 1.5
SPI Speed : 40MHz
SPI Mode : DIO
SPI Flash Size & Map: 32Mbit(512KB+512KB)
jump to run user1 @ 1000

rf cal sector: 1017
rf[112] : 00
rf[113] : 00
rf[114] : 01

SDK ver: 1.5.4.1(39cb9a32) compiled @ Jul 1 2016 20:04:35
phy ver: 972, pp ver: 10.1

"⸮⸮hq⸮⸮(⸮⸮⸮q⸮⸮h⸮+⸮⸮u⸮⸮"⸮j⸮⸮

So my ESP has some life, but it doesn't answer to any commands. I tought that maybe my TFDI is broken and connected btooth to it, but it worked like a charm. So TFDI is ok. After that i tried Arduino Studio and tried to communicate with Serial Monitor, selected (both nl & cr) and 115200 baud. I get the AI-thinker text, but again, no anykind of anwser from ESP. So is this broken unit, and what are my options here?

philbowles wrote:I know it's a bit "horse / stable door" but you can get Wemos D1 for similar (if not cheaper) price. They are much more common and you'll get a) less problems b) much more chance of support.

Think about it for the future...

Thanks for this! I might order one of these too.

Maybe it is the AT command you tried? There are only a handfull of common ones implemeted.
Try ATZ ... an allways use CAPS

If you want to do something interesting with your module, try flashing a Arduino Sketch to it, this should work disregarding problems with AT-firmware.

But do yourself a favour and go for "nodemcu" next time.

Gibberish followed by sensible text when you have Putty at 115200 is perfectly normal

Likewise boot up text followed by gibberish when set to 74880 is also perfectly normal.

This is because the module starts off at the lower baud rate immediately after boot but then recognises its crystal frequency and switches to the default 115200.

You should set Putty to 115200 and ignore the initial gibberish. Then type in capitals AT+GMR followed by CTRL-M and CTRL-J You should then see the version number response. It will not work with just the ENTER key; it needs CRLF