ESP8266 Community Forum

- Mon Mar 30, 2015 2:16 pm #13047 Hi,
I'm trying to flahs my ESP 01 with NODEMCU.
I'm using an external power supply and an FTDI232 with ground from power supply connected to the FTDI.
In Windows Device Manager I select the USB to Serial properties and change the baud rate to 115200.
THen in NODEMCU flasher when i click flash the FTDI blinks and the ESP also blinks blue at the same rate, but at aprox. 10% it stops blinking and it gives me an "Error:Write flash timeout"

What am I doing wrong? any ideas?

Thanks!

- Wed Apr 01, 2015 6:31 am #13178 I too am getting exactly the same problem.

I haven't found a solution yet but I may have possibly found the cause. Do you run Windows and did you buy your FTDI off a chinese company on ebay?

FTDI (the company that make the chip) have managed to brick all counterfit FTDI chips through a recent Windows update, as per This article

- Wed Apr 01, 2015 6:38 am #13179 hi,
i'm not sure if that is the problem.
If you connect the RX to the TX in the FTDI and open putty and send a command do you see it back? if so your FTDI is working ok...
mine works, but still no sucess flashing...

- Thu Apr 02, 2015 5:39 am #13251 That was my thinking, I've done some experimenting.........

I can now flash reliably every time and the two steps I found that seem to work, for me at least.

1 - I moved the common ground between the FTDI and the ESP next to each other on my breadboard (dunno if this would help but seems to)

2 - I think this is the solution - Leave CH_PD floating, hit flash, then connect it to 3.3v - I found it in this post by awell (Thanks!)

viewtopic.php?p=7560#p7560