ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi all,

I'm new to this forum and 'rather' new to ESP8266-01 and I can't get it working. I've been struggling for days now! I want to communicate (AT commands) from my Win8 PC to ESP8266 though USB-FTDI. But problem is I can't get any response, yes randomly some random characters.

My setup:
http://www.esp8266.com/wiki/lib/exe/fetch.php?cache=&media=esp8266_flash_prog_board_sch.png
(tried with and without resistors).

What I tried so far:

- Via Arduino UNO
- Different Baut-rates (I think to stick to 115200)
- Other external power source (battery, ex. power supply)
- FTDI 3.3V power
- Different Serial apps (Arduino serial monitor, Putty)
- Adding / removing resistors (CH_PD, Reset)
- Another PC
- Adding decoupling capacitors
- Another ESP8266-01
- Tried to update firmware (ESP_DOWNLOAD_TOOL_V2.4.exe), but couldn't connect to it with Start button. Gave a "Fail". (

All resulted in the same behaviour: I can connect to the serial port but no response!

And oh, wait; when I play around with the CH_PD pin (adding and removing to 3.3v) some random crap-chars appears! And only once I managed to get a (human readable error: "Fatal error 28"). But this was only once.

Did I miss something? please help! Thanks!

...I'm starting to think my FTDI is not working well.

Any ideas? Wild guesses are welcome?

Thanks!

Have you tried looping the FTDI Tx to Rx? This should checkout the FTDI by echoing back characters sent from a terminal.

Thanks for your reply!

Good Idea; I just tried, and that's working fine. I can see the characters I type in Putty.

... so, what can it be? I think I miss something really simple here.