So I just bought my first ESP8266 board after hearing raving reviews about it. I specifically bought this one http://goo.gl/UbUw9Z it's a Esp-03 board.
I have soldered it to a homemade breakout board and have been trying to get this thing running for a while now, with no success. I put a multimeter in series with the 3.3V line coming from my FTDI USB to serial converter http://goo.gl/6oX4Gy and can see the chip is drawing ~29mA. When I let the chip-powerdown pin go low, it draws about 6uA.
My problem is it is not responding to any AT commands and I can't seem to get anything out of it. I'm trying to connect to it through the Arduino serial monitor and have tried pete's esp8266 terminal program as well. The only time I get anything out of the chip is when I disconnect the chip-powerdown pin from VCC then reconnect it. Once reconnected I get a long line of jumbled characters and no "Ready" message.
So I have a few questions. I have read multiple accounts on the correct way to power the module.... None of which have helped me. My first question, does the FTDI module I bought theoretically work with the esp8266? What is the correct way to get the esp8266 (esp-03) to boot normally? What are the chances that the chip has no firmware? If it is likely that it has no firmware present, is there a easy to follow tutorial for flashing it via windows 7 OS?
Thank you for your time!
-Adrian