ESP8266 Community Forum

Hello all,

I have been trying for several days to connect an Esp8266 12e module to my Arduino IDE without success. I have been able to program chips on NodeMCU boards but I am not able to program just the chips. Here is the chip I have. I could not figure out how to add an image to this post so here is a link to my facebook page which contains the pictures of the chip. https://www.facebook.com/michael.beckwith.98 I don't know how else to get the pictures to show up in this post. They are .jpg files and it keeps saying the file format is invalid. Anyway, When I hookup my chip to my computer I am not getting any serial transmission at all. Others have said the chip should return something when it is powered on to indicate what state the chip is in. I get nothing. The connections I am making are:

CH_PD/EN>>3.3
Reset>>3.3
GPIO0>>GND
GPIO15>>GND
RX>>TX
TX>>RX

I have tried this and I have also tried Connecting GPIO2>>3.3 as well.

The chip lights up so I know it is on, it is just not doing anything and I keep getting ESPCOMM_sync failed errors. I am using an FTDI chip that I used to program the NodeMCU boards. If anyone has any information that could help me I would be very grateful. I am also using an external power source for the chip. I am not powering anything off of the FTDI chip. Thank you.

UPDATE:

I have been able to flash the chip. The problem, from what I can tell, was an issue with the power source. I now have GPIO0 connected to a separate 3.3V source that is grounded to my other source and the chip came to life. If anyone can explain all of the characters that pop up upon power-up I would appreciate it. such as:

load, tail, chsum, csum, ~ld, and it also says ets jan 8 2013. Also, is there a list of all the modes that the chip starts-up into? (1, 7) (3, 7)...etc?

Thank you everyone in advance for any help.