Esp8266 - Programming Success

For several weeks, I have been failing at programming the Esp8266 ES-11.

I had purchased a group of five Esp8266's for initial experimentation. I also purchased a small number of 3.3v/5.0v FTDI (USB to Serial) Adapters which are used to program the Esp8266's (see previous post).

Esp8266 and FTDI

The FTDI is also used to configure the Esp8266's using simple (default) "AT" instructions.  I could configure the Esp for "Station", "Access Point", and for "Both" modes. In "Both" modes, the Esp can be configured as a WIFI-to-WIFI Router. The cellphone APPs; "Net Scan" and "WIFI Analyser" are very useful to understand what is going on (or not).

Everything was looking great.

So, the next step was to compile a program, to replacing the Default functions with a Program that I have written. The instructions looked simple, and there are several Programming Environments to choose from; Arduino IDE, nodemcu, ESPlorer, and others. Besides, supposedly, there are easy to use programs to re-Flash the device back to the "Factory Fresh" original (ROM) state (so I thought).

This is where the Trouble Started.

At each attempt to do something interesting, that is; Program the Device or Reflash it back to original configuration - I killed another of my Esp8266s, in other words I BRICKED it!

Of the five purchased Esp8266's, I managed to BRICK three of them, I only had two good Esp's left. Now, being gun shy, with the new Exp8266, everything was suspect.

The goal became "How to UnBrick a Esp8266" without "Bricking" another. I have been working this problem for about two weeks without progress or solution.

There is a ton of information on the Internet regarding Bricked Exp8266's, but a lot of it is confusing and conflicting.

This post is about what I did to UnBrick my Esp8266's.

I gave my friend Jeff - KO7M a Bricked Esp8266 and one of my FTDI USB-to-Serial Adapters. We worked several days trying to download or ReFlash the Exp8266 - without much luck.


The Fix.

After several more hours of work, Jeff suggested and tried a different FTDI.

It worked !

To make a very long story short, we replaced the FTDI with another variety, the Parallax PropPlug. We think the previous FTDI was corrupting the downloaded data that was being sent to the Esp8266's.

Yes I know, the PropPlug is a 5V device and Esp8266 are 3.3v devices. But I forgot that on the original test, and it is working, so I have not changed the configuration (only TX/RX/RST/GND are connected).

UPDATE: One of my readers (yeti) provided correction, the PropPlug is actually a 3.3v chip and device, I have always thought it was 5v. See Link,  Thanks !!

The PropPlug (on the right)
connected to
the Esp8266 (on the left)

Question: why would the original FTDI work interactively, but would NOT work to download Batch and Binary files? - "I Don't Know, and Don't Care" - with the PropPlug, I now have something that works.

Since I started using the PropPlug I have NOT had a single failure, and we have recovered each of the Esp8266's with either the original Binaries, or my compiled programs.

Currently I am playing with Arduino IDE Compiled WIFI WebServers, one of the servers has been running for greater than 48 hours, and has serviced about 4800 test page requests. I have three running side-by-side.

Three Web Servers

These will become a part of my Internet-of-Things (IoT).

I can't guarantee that they are online, but you can check at: http://dc02.ebcon.com:8160/

Esp8266 Web Server

Note: the page refreshes each 30 seconds.

More fun and information to follow.


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