ESP8266 Community Forum

- Thu Mar 03, 2016 12:10 pm #42338 Hi all,

I've taken delivery of one of these: http://www.electrodragon.com/product/es ... pter-board and it seems to be DOA. These have an onboard 5v->3v regulator and take a 5v supply. I've been speaking to electrodragon support and I'm told these devices are supposed to come pre-flashed with AT firmware but at no point have I been able to get this thing talking reliably over serial. I've managed to flash the device a couple of times after many attempts but still no serial comms. It generally feels very flakey.

Things that I've tried:
1) 2 separate laptops to rule out USB host problems - a linux laptop and a windows 7 laptop
2) 2 separate USB/TTL devices - one a CH340 based device and the other a PL2303
3) Different board supply types including:
a) a brand new YwRobot supply rated to 600mA
b) direct 5v supply from a spare USB port
c) indirect 5v supply from a spare arduino uno powered via USB
4) I've managed to reflash AT firmware via esptool.py once which did seem to complete without error but the device was still unresponsive after that
5) I've managed to flash custom firmware once in the arduino IDE but the device still remained unresponsive although it is good at spouting bursts of gibberish into the port monitor at all baud rates..not a constant stream of gibberish, just short bursts where good data should be

Has anyone seen anything similar with one of these electrodragon boards?
Any ideas at all?

Thanks
Joe

- Fri Mar 04, 2016 1:46 pm #42419 Well after resoldering all joints of my own and also those on the eletrodragon board and that not improving things, I ran out of ideas and just gave up on this device. I might come back and take another look at it again in future but right now I'm convinced this one is a gonner.

To move things on I built up a spare ESP12F I had on one of the commonly available white breakout boards and built up a stripboard prototyping board to play with..and guess what - it just worked! I'm happy this 2nd option easily worked out having spent the last 3 days trying to get the electrodragon thing to work. Fool me really because I opted for the electrodragon board thinking it would make things easier and in the end it made my life miserable for a short while

I think there's a moral in there somewhere..perhaps something like "trust your own dodgy junk and not someone elses"

Thanks for listening - therapy session over