ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi there,

I wondered what the correct way of initializing a fresh Wemos D1 Mini, for Arduino use, is.
I thought I only need to use esptool to erase_flash and can then upload my sketches with the Arduino IDE (d1 mini board settings).

However, it only worked after I used esptool to flash nodemcu onto it - is this normal? I thought that would be redundant..

Can anyone tell me what the right steps are?

Hi,

No that's not normal. Usually the IDE does everything on it's own.

You don't need to do anything other then downloading the Arduino IDE, installing ESP8266 support, preferable using the Boards manager and selecting the right board in the IDE.

Do you get any error messages?
You can activate debug output for upload in the IDE settings to get further information.

what 8n1 says and make sure you give it a decent powersource. A usb ftdi converter may be enough to just get a programin ther but it is often not enough to run one

Thank you, I didn't get any errors, it uploaded normally but was not used.
After I used the esptool to erase + flash nodemcu, it worked to flash from arduino ide directly..

I have some more wemos here and will try these on the weekend with debug output