ESP8266 Community Forum

I bought a wifi-controlled relay from a chinese vendor through ebay. It seems to be called a "ESP8266 ESP-01S" by most vendors. I thought all I'd have to do was power it up, see its wifi connection and connect to it, access a rudimentary gui using a browser, and configure it to connect to my wifi network, give it a static IP, gateway, etc.

I see it's wifi network name is Farylink_somenumber. I connect to it. It's IP is 192.168.4.1 and my PC gets 192.168.4.2. I use my browser on it - and get nothing. I port-scan it (all 64k port) - nothing. I scan the entire 192.168.4.0/24 network to see if it's using a second IP for configuration. I get nothing. One other small detail - the board seems to have a single LED, but it doesn't come on, not even when I have a wifi connection to it.

I bought 3 of these wifi relays, and each comes as 2 boards, one board is the relay and the other is the ESP8266 board. I've tried 2 of the ESP boards so far, and both behave as I've just described above. I've powered just the ESP8266 board by itself (I have lab power supply with plenty of current) so I know the power supply is fine (and used 3.3 volts).

I start digging and learn about this whole esp8266 world. I really didn't want to have to learn about this world. I thought this thing would work "out of the box" and do what I wanted - which was to control a dumb relay over a wifi connection.

So what I'm here to ask about is - why are these things sold with some sort of firmware that apparently does nothing? Is there anything known about the default functionality these boards have as shipped?

I suppose I now have to cobble together a programming IDE, suitable firmware, and serial interface just to make this thing work as advertised?

What did you actually buy, since the ESP-01 is a controller-module, not a relay module and looks like this:


Most modules from China come programmed with the standard AT-firmware and nothing else; you'll need to write your own firmware to make it into something useful.

I found a pic of what I bought:
https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/-mQAAOSw ... s-l300.jpg

It wasn't from that particular ebay vendor, but the relay board looks exactly like that. I notice on some pics of ESP8266 boards that there can be some printing on the board, near the antenna trace. Mine has no such printing, so I have no idea who the actual maker is. Is there a list of variants for the 8266 board, with photos, that would identify who makes it and what the stock firmware does?

I found someone talking about farylink on 4chan I think and all they said was that a lot of these boards come from china showing farylink as the wifi network but they don't bother with it since they flash in some new firmware first thing they do.

Does nobody here get these boards straight from china? And if you do, do you ever power it up and mess with it, as it comes? Or do you straight away burn some new code into it?

Sum~guy wrote:I suppose I now have to cobble together a programming IDE, suitable firmware, and serial interface just to make this thing work as advertised?

why, what was advertised?