ESP8266 Community Forum

- Tue Dec 02, 2014 6:19 pm #3870 Dear everybody,

I am a second year Industrial Design student working on a project in which I want to incorporate an ESP8266. I don't have a big electronical background, I want to mention this, because I may come across as a noob, well, I am one.
My idea is to make a insole with 5 analogue pressure sensors, which transmits data about how you walk. I thought the ESP would be perfect for this, because it is so small.

Now I already having maior difficulties with communicating to it. Because it needs 3.3V, I have tried hooking it up to a FT232RL (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/650). Which didn't give me anything. Next to that I tried the voltage divider approach, this also didn't work. '

Now I plugged it directly into my arduino, and it said ready at a baudrate of 9600. Awesome. But it doesn't respond to AT commands. I can see it's transmitting data when I use an AT command, but my Arduino Uno doesn't understand it, so I don't get any feedback.

Does somebody know what I am missing here? Do I need to add something to the arduino software? And when I plug it directly into my Arduino, what are the chances of blowing up the ESP?

Thanks in advance for helping.

- Tue Dec 02, 2014 11:46 pm #3889 search for CRLF in this forum to make sure your terminal app is setup correctly and then make sure you are powering the module with 300ma.

- Thu Dec 04, 2014 12:16 pm #3975 First make sure your 3.3 volts has enough current to handle the chip.
From an arduino you can only run 9600 baud on the serial port and to do that on the esp8266 you must upgrade the firmware to change the baud rate.

You can use the FT232RL cable but you need to make sure that you use a voltage divider on the transmit from the ft232rl cable to the esp8266 so your back at 3v. A 1k/2k divider will get you close enough to work.

and finally depending on what "termal" program your using you might need to force an CR/LF at the end of each line.

Check out my little test script viewtopic.php?f=8&t=672

I had the arduino send the command and the usb/serial to just look at the data coming back.

Gary