ESP8266 Community Forum

I picked up a hazzah to start learning. I used a plain esp a while back for some simple AT testing but thought the huzzah might be easier for my IOT projects I want to create.

Basically, I'm coming from the arduino world and would like to leverage the IDE to make my life simpler.

I have a HiLetgo FT232RL FTDI USB to TTL Serial Adapter which I picked up off of amazon. I used it in my earlier testing of the ESP without difficulty but admit I didn't flash anything, simply worked with AT commands.

I followed the instructions https://learn.adafruit.com/adafruit-huzzah-esp8266-breakout/using-arduino-ide to setup arduino ide but have had terrible results. I have tried with my MAC air as well as 2 different windows 7 machines and have similar results.

I have succeeded in uploading their blink and web test sketches but it will say uploading and then just freeze. The serial led's stop flashing and it will just sit there forever. If you reset the huzzah it will sometimes actually run the sketch. Arduino IDE still will claim uploading. You have to force quit it and start it again.

Other times and any time I have tried some of my own code I find that it is spitting errors on 74880 baud:

epc1=0x40100027, epc2=0x00000000, epc3=0x00000000, excvaddr=0x00000000, depc=0x00000000
Fatal exception (0):

My guess is it's stuck in a bad flash. I can recover by flashing the blink or something.

I have also tried flashing nodemcu firmware back on with esptool.py and that also is finiky at best. You have to define baud of 9600 and even still that fails most of the time with errors such as:

A fatal error occurred: Failed to write to target Flash after seq 5633 (got result 0x1, 0x7)
A fatal error occurred: Invalid head of packet

FYI there's a review of your particular ftdi device on Amazon from October that states that it didn't work with the esp8266. You may want to pick up a different ftdi device.

damage31 wrote:FYI there's a review of your particular ftdi device on Amazon from October that states that it didn't work with the esp8266. You may want to pick up a different ftdi device.

classic... figures. I'll order a different one. Any suggestions of known working ones?

I bought ten of these several years ago because they were way cheaper than FTDI adapters and have successfully used them with AVR, ESP-8266 and STM32-based Arduinos all running at 3v3 using the built-in Linux driver:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/10PCS-6Pin-USB- ... 2eca224aaa

I solder an extra pair of 4-pin headers on either side to access the additional pins esp. the RTS pin that is tied to the ESP-8266 Reset pin. Don't try using the 3V3 supply on the adapter to power your ESP-8266, it is only good for 50ma or so and that is not enough. This is not unique to CP2102-based adapters. If you want to power your ESP-8266 from the adapter use the 5V pin and a 3V3 regulator. The one downside to this adapter is that the pinout is not the same as most FTDI-based adapters so you need to be careful when you connect it to your device.