ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi,

I'm experienced with Raspberry Pi's but only just starting with the ESP8266. So far I've bought this ESP-01 module and this programmer

Plugged the two together and plugged into my PC. The programmer showed up as a USB to serial adaptor and I can send AT commands to the pre-installed default firmware on the ESP-01 okay.

I can't figure out how to replace that firmware with my own code though? I've downloaded Arduino IDE and installed the board. What am I missing here? Do I have to do something to put the ESP-01 module in programming mode?

I found a page somewhere on the web mentioning pulling a GPIO pin down to GND to enable programming? Wouldn't that require a button or jumper or similar though? My programmer doesn't have any of those, it looks like this:

According to this video, which looks like the same as yours, you'll need to solder on a switch to get the ESP into programming mode - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uaIWZCRSz8&t=170

If you are just starting out then for development I'd recommend getting one of the esp8266 modules with built in usb - serial like a NodeMcu or a Wemos D1.

They are very cheap and will plug directly in plus they have on board circuitry to automatically put the chip in flash mode when the Arduino does an upload sketch.

They also give full access to all the GPIO pins available on an esp8266. The ESP-01 is very limited. If you then subsequently want small minimal modules for end use then you could use your ESP-01 (with buttons necessary to get into flash mode) or better, in my view use an ESP-12F module which are small and give you all the IO pins.