ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi,
So I am not a HW guru like some of you , and I am hoping that someone here can help me to figure out what is going on and how I can fix it.

I few years back, using hc-05 and Arduino, I hacked together an LED strips controller that I could control with my Android phone, basically I use the Bluetooth module (hc-05 http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/2909258454 ... =82&chn=ps) to communicate with the Arduino (serial communication, RX/TX -> TX/RX).
I’ve got a few esp03s so I thought why not replace the hc-05 with the esp03? So over the weekend I wrote some lua scripts that reads stuff (string, like r1:100, g3:200 and etc) from a socket and passes the info to esp03’s uart, and the message from the arduino’s uart is passed back to the socket, nothing fancy.

My test setup is as following:
The esp03 is powered from a 3.3v voltage regulator that is connected to http://www.ebay.com/itm/DC-DC-Buck-Conv ... 3aac74a9e8
The Rx/TX are connected to a 3.3v FTDI, I verified the messages from and to esp in the espexplorer console.

But when I power the esp03 (via same 3.3v regulator, which has a large (1F) in the vin and a smaller capacitor on the vout) from http://www.ebay.com/itm/SUPERNIGHT-12V- ... 2a334f04ba, I get a lot of junk characters in RX/TX readings.
At first I had the esp03’s RX/TX directly connected to the Arduinos TX/RX. Note that, the same setup with the hc-05 works just fine.
Then I added two pull up resistors (tried 1K and 100 Ohm) to both RX/TX, and same results.

Does someone know what is going on?
Thanks a bunch.
/N

First would be are the earths all connected?
Second Vcc,CH-PD ,reset all high
Gnd,GPIO15,GPIO0 all low .
Power off then on one flash of blue led. Chip is ready to program
No need for an arduino as this chip has 5 times speed and 16 times storage and the whole lot can be done on it and pin expanders can be used to get more pins but thats your choice of course you may have good reason to do it that way .
Arduino (serial communication, RX/TX -> TX/RX). thats if you have a usb connected via FTDI cable direct . I think it may be RX to RX if its through an arduino board but don't quote me as I have not tried it. You might have to search on that one.