ESP8266 Community Forum

- Tue May 17, 2016 5:53 am #47558 First of all, sorry for reviving this old thread. Didn't want to start a new one as it describes my problem well.

So I got a few ESP-01 and ESP-12, hooked them up as seen here:

with a little difference, adding a 10k resistor at CH_PD. As soon as i pull up CH_PD the uC is getting so hot that it can't be touched anymore. Ofc. i expected it to be a little more warm, but directly burning my finger wasn't to awesome. Already fried one and don't really want to fry more as it is part of a Home Automation Project. All are acting exactly the same and tried to remove the LED resistor as a possible solution mentioned earlier.

Last edited by maurizze on Wed May 18, 2016 1:09 am, edited 1 time in total.

- Tue May 17, 2016 1:37 pm #47569 The FTDI chip cannot provide enough current to power the ESP. Try another power source such as 2xAA akaline batteries.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10002

I do not know why the chip gets so hot. You might search for other ESP-01 hook ups to see what pull up/down resistor values are used on which pins.

- Wed May 18, 2016 4:05 am #47593

The FTDI chip cannot provide enough current to power the ESP. Try another power source such as 2xAA akaline batteries.

viewtopic.php?f=6&t=10002

I do not know why the chip gets so hot. You might search for other ESP-01 hook ups to see what pull up/down resistor values are used on which pins.

Thanks for the suggestion with batteries (2xAAA) instead of the ftdi chip. While it still runs quite hot, it doesn't burn itself this time. But I really can't understand why this should change something. Shouldn't the FTDI run cooler if it can't provide as much current? Does the MCU use much more current while programming? My second one burned while trying to flash a new verion of NONOS (Got some quite funny looks from my coworker, fiddling around with a smoking thingy).

- Thu May 19, 2016 3:17 am #47635 I am not sure why the first one smoked. The lack of pull up/down resistors may have contributed to the failure. The resistors reduce the current flow in and out of the ESP GPIO pins.

The ESP uses more current when it turns on its WiFi radio. During bootload programming the radio is off.

I think it would be easier to use a development board such as the NodeMCU or WeMos mini d1 because they have all necessary resistors, capacitors, reset buttton, voltage regulator, USB to serial, etc.

If you are in the US, Sparkfun and Adafruit sell ESP8266 breakout boards but they are more expensive.