ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi, I will try to make this short and sweet, for the past 3/4 weeks I have been playing quite a lot with the esp8266 module. And tonight, quite miserable I have came to the conclusion that the ESP8266 is totally unreliable. But I have never seen anyone complain about that, so the problem must be within me.

I have setup a website using php, where i can change the data the device will retrieve using a certain link. (I can elaborate more on this if anyone is interested)

I have programmed the Arduino that it communicates with soft serial to the esp8266 in AT commands, and that works. For a while at least. If I leave the whole circuit for a time(could be anything from a few minutes to almost a day) somehow it will disconnect and the Arduino needs a reset. (I have spend a very long time in making the most robust code possible).

I have programmed the esp8266 directly using the Arduino IDE, same issue. After a while(be it minutes or hours) it will just disconnect and this time it will need to be re flashed to work again.

I haven't tried NodeMCU yet, at this stage I am just at that level where it is hard to see the point.

Now after investing a LOAD of time into this I am still quite sure that there exist a solution which is reliable and works. So if anyone can help me by pointing me into the direction I need to go, it would be so helpful.

Cyberduke wrote:Hi, I will try to make this short and sweet, for the past 3/4 weeks I have been playing quite a lot with the esp8266 module. And tonight, quite miserable I have came to the conclusion that the ESP8266 is totally unreliable. But I have never seen anyone complain about that, so the problem must be within me.

I have setup a website using php, where i can change the data the device will retrieve using a certain link. (I can elaborate more on this if anyone is interested)

I have programmed the Arduino that it communicates with soft serial to the esp8266 in AT commands, and that works. For a while at least. If I leave the whole circuit for a time(could be anything from a few minutes to almost a day) somehow it will disconnect and the Arduino needs a reset. (I have spend a very long time in making the most robust code possible).

I have programmed the esp8266 directly using the Arduino IDE, same issue. After a while(be it minutes or hours) it will just disconnect and this time it will need to be re flashed to work again.

I haven't tried NodeMCU yet, at this stage I am just at that level where it is hard to see the point.

Now after investing a LOAD of time into this I am still quite sure that there exist a solution which is reliable and works. So if anyone can help me by pointing me into the direction I need to go, it would be so helpful.

I understand your frustration. You do not have to look too far to find complaints about ESP8266 reliability, they are around but that is neither unusual nor surprising.

I have spent the last three evenings (and then some) working with an ESP8266 and an Orvibo wifi socket. The idea is to have the ESP8266 set up as an AP and control the S-20 socket - no router at all. Using the Arduino IDE (1.65/staging version/ 2.1.0-rc2). Yes, I managed to get discovery to work and I can now turn it on and off with *some* reliability. Getting there has been very frustrating - in my view, at least tonight, UDP packets on the AP mode are problematic. They work, finally, mostly [and I don't mean the inherent unreliability of receiving a UDP packet). Earlier, I spent a great deal of time getting a broadcast/multicast packet to work for the discovery part.

Ok, that's my whine, but here is what I was thinking and it is relevant to your comment about "point me in the direction...". I am thinking that I need to try the same project using another wifi chip. Around here somewhere I have an RN1723. If I did the same project with another chip, I could get a handle on whether it was "me or the chip (and software)". I'm serious, don't we need to use a TI chip or a photon or something else out there to get a better definition of what expectations of reliability should be?

True, I don't relish learning another system, but.....

DrG wrote:I understand your frustration. You do not have to look too far to find complaints about ESP8266 reliability, they are around but that is neither unusual nor surprising.

I have spent the last three evenings (and then some) working with an ESP8266 and an Orvibo wifi socket. The idea is to have the ESP8266 set up as an AP and control the S-20 socket - no router at all. Using the Arduino IDE (1.65/staging version/ 2.1.0-rc2). Yes, I managed to get discovery to work and I can now turn it on and off with *some* reliability. Getting there has been very frustrating - in my view, at least tonight, UDP packets on the AP mode are problematic. They work, finally, mostly [and I don't mean the inherent unreliability of receiving a UDP packet). Earlier, I spent a great deal of time getting a broadcast/multicast packet to work for the discovery part.

Ok, that's my whine, but here is what I was thinking and it is relevant to your comment about "point me in the direction...". I am thinking that I need to try the same project using another wifi chip. Around here somewhere I have an RN1723. If I did the same project with another chip, I could get a handle on whether it was "me or the chip (and software)". I'm serious, don't we need to use a TI chip or a photon or something else out there to get a better definition of what expectations of reliability should be?

True, I don't relish learning another system, but.....

Uhm, you make a very good point. Seems that trying a different module might seem like a very good idea. My friend has an ESP8266 12E just laying around somewhere. But I have very little faith that it will hold better reliability. I have also looked around my local online stores and nothing comes even close to the esp8266 in price, which is rather disappointing.

I don't know, i've been impressed with how reliable ESP's are despite my rough and ready treatment. I've found with just few simple things they can work fine and for months on end:
1) a capable power supply
2) bypass capacitors
3) don't have long dangling hookup wires on floating pins, use a pullup/down resistor if the wire's long
4) make sure breadboard jumper wires don't have loose connectors, soldered connections are best

If yours is being unreliable take a photo of the setup and post it here and probably someone will point out what could be wrong.