ESP8266 Community Forum

- Thu Sep 08, 2016 4:21 pm #54705 For all those who are stuck upgrading the firmware, http://nodemcu.readthedocs.io/en/latest ... g-firmware is your friend.

1. Be sure to flash the init data to the correct address.
2. Be sure to use the correct write_flash options.
3. Do yourself a favor and use esptool.py.

For ESP-12E-based devices (or others with 4MB flash) the command is as follows:

Code: Select allesptool.py --port <serial-port-of-ESP8266> write_flash -fm dio -fs 32m 0x00000 <nodemcu-firmware>.bin 0x3fc000 esp_init_data_default.bin

https://frightanic.com/
https://nodemcu-build.com/
https://github.com/marcelstoer/nodemcu-pyflasher

- Sat Sep 10, 2016 9:41 am #54812

For all those who are stuck upgrading the firmware, http://nodemcu.readthedocs.io/en/latest ... g-firmware is your friend.

1. Be sure to flash the init data to the correct address.
2. Be sure to use the correct write_flash options.
3. Do yourself a favor and use esptool.py.

For ESP-12E-based devices (or others with 4MB flash) the command is as follows:

Code: Select allesptool.py --port <serial-port-of-ESP8266> write_flash -fm dio -fs 32m 0x00000 <nodemcu-firmware>.bin 0x3fc000 esp_init_data_default.bin

Thanks for your post!!!

New guy here! Just got my ESP8266 Nodemcu developer board from eBay yesterday, and had all the joys and frustrations of a newbie trying to follow the instructions/tutorials I could find using Google.

I had almost instant/easy success using this site and links:

http://www.whatimade.today/flashing-the-nodemcu-firmware-on-the-esp8266-linux-guide/

However, I found that other tools were not working with my chip after this. I began to suspect that maybe the firmware I used was old -- and I was right! This tutorial pointed to 0.9.6-dev_20150704. But how was I to know this? Hmmm...

So I found out that the 'new' way was to generate custom firmware using https://nodemcu-build.com/, but even though the flashing seemed to work, I ended up with a flickering LED and no ability to connect with any (Linux) terminal program without junk on the screen. I was then misled (?) into believing that this was due to incompatible baud rates, which the terminal utilities were incapable of dealing with:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37559525/errors-flashing-nodemcu-to-esp8266

I finally stumbled across this site, and various posts, suggesting that my 'esptool.py' flashing command needed an extra parameter and file (!) e.g.

Code: Select allsudo python esptool.py ... 0x3fc000 esp_init_data_default.bin

Your post was the confirmation that I needed to try this -- with a bit of fear that this 'new way' might somehow brick my device, but it seemed to work. So, this leaves me confused about 'what changed' the necessitated this additional parameter?

My next challenge has to do with taking advantage of my ability to set the wireless functionality to a working state, but being confused about how to 'connect' wirelessly...

- Sun Sep 11, 2016 1:47 am #54851 Great, glad you got it fixed.

But how was I to know this?

I don't understand why you didn't stick with our docs from the beginning. Both http://nodemcu.com/ and https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-firmware (2nd hit on Google) point to the official documentation. Their the entry page has a "Getting started" section which lists 'Build the firmware', 'Flash the firmware' and 'Upload code'.
We're constantly looking to improve things. Suggestions?

https://frightanic.com/
https://nodemcu-build.com/
https://github.com/marcelstoer/nodemcu-pyflasher

- Sun Sep 11, 2016 7:16 am #54864

Great, glad you got it fixed.

But how was I to know this?

I don't understand why you didn't stick with our docs from the beginning. Both http://nodemcu.com/ and https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-firmware (2nd hit on Google) point to the official documentation. Their the entry page has a "Getting started" section which lists 'Build the firmware', 'Flash the firmware' and 'Upload code'.
We're constantly looking to improve things. Suggestions?

In my case, I think it was merely my incorrect assumption that the tutorials I was finding out there were 'current', when they were not. Things seem to move very fast in the ESP8266 world! A good user forum is another good thing for the newbie like me. I guess, with every 'new' topic, a newbie becomes overwhelmed and doesn't know which resource to utilize -- and I happened to pick old and/or misleading ones. Actually, this continued yesterday for me as well i.e. I found what appeared to be an easy/working example of talking to a DHT22 temperature/humidity sensor with an ESP8266 -- but it didn't work, and I had to again struggle with finding newer/working examples