ESP8266/Serial Debugging

Experiments

Variables and Parameters

I had to try a couple of combinations of different parameters.

Variables:

• Baudrate - 57600 or 115200 (depending on chip/board version)
• RX/TX pinouts
• High/floating CH_PD pin

First Set of Experiments

With this first set of experiments, I was connecting to the serial device at /dev/tty.usbserial.

Connecting to serial port at /dev/tty.usbserial with timeout of 5 seconds:

First Round

First round (slow rate, v 1):

Test 1A: 57600 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to TX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin floating

• Nope.

Test 2A: 57600 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to TX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin high

• Nope.

Test 3A: 57600 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to RX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin floating

• Nope.

Test 4A: 57600 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to RX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin high

• Nope.

Second Round

Second round (fast rate, v 2):

Test 1B: 115200 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to TX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin floating

• Nope.

Test 2B: 115200 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to TX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin high

• Nope.

Test 3B: 115200 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to RX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin floating

• Nope.

Test 4B: 115200 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to RX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin high

• Nope.

Second Set of Experiments

Keep on trying. I ran the serial library's port discovery tool, and it listed /dev/cu.usbserial, so maybe that's the device we should be using:

$ python -m serial.tools.list_ports
/dev/cu.Bluetooth-Incoming-Port
/dev/cu.usbserial
2 ports found

First Set of Experiments

Connecting to serial port at /dev/cu.usbserial with timeout of 5 seconds:

Test 1A: 57600 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to TX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin floating

• Nope.

Test 2A: 57600 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to TX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin high

• Nope.

Test 3A: 57600 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to RX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin floating

Test 4A: 57600 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to RX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin high

Second Set of Experiments

Second round (fast rate, v 2):

Test 1B: 115200 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to TX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin floating

Test 2B: 115200 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to TX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin high

Test 3B: 115200 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to RX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin floating

Test 4B: 115200 baud rate, RX on ESP8266 connected to RX on PL2302 (mini usb to serial board), CH_PD pin high

Starting Over

Okay, let's start over.

Installing the esp8266/arduino library from Github makes it possible to program the ESP8266 microcontroller directly from the Arduino IDE, and provides some nice API functions as well. It takes a couple of steps to install, but the steps are dead simple.