ESP8266 Community Forum

- Sun Aug 02, 2015 10:12 am #24825 All,

Up until yesterday, I was able to upload sketches from Arduino IDE 1.6.5 to my ESP-01 and they ran. I could see the output on Serial Monitor, connect to WiFi, read i2c sensors send data to remote servers. It was all starting to look brilliant.

However, although this worked on my desktop PC, I found I was unable to do the same thing on my laptop. If I tried to upload the same sketch using my laptop, the sketch upload seemed to go OK, but once the IDE said "Done Uploading", the sketch did not run and there was no output on Serial Monitor. Pressing the reset button I have attached to ESP-01 (switch to ground, 10K pullup) just caused a line of garbage to appear on Serial Monitor. Switch back to the desktop PC and the exact same sketch uploads & runs fine on the same ESP-01. This was strange and awkward but I could live with it.

Yesterday, the same problem suddenly started to happen on my desktop PC. I can't think of anything I changed that could have caused this, I was just making minor amendments to a sketch and it started happening. I have tried removing all but essential components and uploaded a very basic sketch:

Code: Select allvoid setup() {
  Serial.begin(115200);
}

void loop() {
  Serial.println("Test");
  delay(1000);
}

When I upload this sketch, I see:

Code: Select allSketch uses 207,296 bytes (47%) of program storage space. Maximum is 434,160 bytes.
Global variables use 44,812 bytes (54%) of dynamic memory, leaving 37,108 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 81,920 bytes.
Uploading 211440 bytes from /tmp/build3153175143704989962.tmp/Blink.cpp.bin to flash at 0x00000000
...............................................................................................................................................................................................................


followed by the "Upload Done" message on the IDE. But nothing on Serial monitor.

Both desktop and laptop are running Ubuntu 14.04 and Arduino 1.6.5.

Can anyone suggest how I can diagnose the problem please? My ESP development has ground to a halt and it was going so well!

Last edited by PaulRB on Sat Aug 29, 2015 3:37 am, edited 1 time in total.

- Sun Aug 02, 2015 11:08 am #24828 Howdy Paul,
A description of your physical configurations would also help ... a schematic and a picture would be perfect. I am most interested in how you have configured GPIO0 ... but that is just one notion. There is also the idea of things working until they don't ... so a look at the whole environment would be useful. Another key question is "what changed?" ... do you also have other ESP8266 instances to test ... just in case your current instance has "gone bad"?

Neil

Free ESP8266 book available for download here.

- Sun Aug 02, 2015 2:01 pm #24838 Hi Neil, thanks for responding.

Schematic:

ESP_Basic.png

1438542201255.jpg

1438542273419.jpg

Not sure what specifically you mean by "the environment"... What's Changed? Nothing important would be my answer, that's what's so annoying.

Don't have another ESP, but have been recommended to buy an ESP-12 on another thread, so will go ahead and do that. However, at one point, I could consistently program the ESP-01 on my desktop pc but not the laptop, so if the ESP developed a fault, it showed up only on the laptop and not the desktop.

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- Sun Aug 02, 2015 2:14 pm #24839 I read on another forum that the quality of the flash chips may not be the best on some of these...

Reports of failures like you describe sound somewhat familiar, they work for a while and then they quit. Some guys were replacing the flash chips as a matter of course. The esp8266 chips themselves didn't sound like the failure point.

Swapping out entire devices would be my first thing to do before changing much else in your previously known good setup.