Weather station: ESP8266 Arduino WiFi Scan sketch feedback jumbled. What's wrong?

Question

I can communicate via Arduino IDE by following the WiFi Scan Arduino examples for the ESP8266.  The reset button works and I'm able to hold the Flash&Reset to get the feedback as shown in the manual. With the sketch loaded, serial feedback @ 115200 baud all I get is jumbled stuff. Tried all bauds rates and even tried uploading at different baud, nothing works.  I did load a different sketch to blink the LED, which worked.  Any thoughts?

Answer 1

Hi DeWayne

I received your screenshots, thank you. Is it ok if I post the link to your photos here so other can help as well? First observation is that your device seems to be rebooting constantly and that the boot information is given in clear at 115200 which is quite unusual. After you reflashed the device you just get strange characters. I've seen something similar recently.

Maybe you have the same issue as described here? https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino/issues/4005
In that case it might help if you switch to a generic ESP8266 module and use 40MHz as Crystal Frequency. Can you please try?

Daniel - ThingPulse

Comments

Daniel,

Your suggestions didn't help. I received overall comm fail when loading sketch.  I reviewed the Github issue article above and it appears the chip may just be defective.  For a chip less than $8 and from China, quality control may not be a number one concern.  I've ordered two more from a different supplier from Amazon, which arrives tomorrow.  Stay tuned for my results.  Thanks.

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Daniel,

I received two new chips from Amazon today.  One works great with the WiFiScan sketch at 115200 while the other has a bit of a temper.  It requires me to use the RST and FLASH together to set it into  boot mode first before it will ever load.  Otherwise, it Comm fails every time.  The first time I was able to load at 57600 with a baud of 74880 and the scan worked fine.  When I tried to reload it again, it failed and after trial and error found the need to set it into boot mode.  This chip had the FLASH button stuck out of the bag and had to work it loose.  The FLASH button didn't engage every time but had to work it a bit to get it to take.  One other item.  The RST and FLASH would display at 74880 but not at 115200 but the WiFi Scan did display at 115200.