HOWTO: Flashing ESP8266

[SciroccoEV]

Have you clicked on refresh?

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

Are any of the LEDs on the blue pill blinking, or are they on solidly?

[ZooKeeper]

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[MattsAwesomeStuff]

BluePill & Olimex have solid red LEDs

...

I bet you made the same mistake I did. There is supposed to be a blinking LED if you flash the firmware successfully.

Did you flash the bootloader file before you flashed the SINE or FOC file?

See my failures (and the previous forum page), if that's true:

viewtopic.php?p=5760#p5760

[ZooKeeper]

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[MattsAwesomeStuff]

TX goes to RX.
RX goes to TX.

Maybe try rebooting them.

Other than that I'm coming up blank.

[Isaac96]

How about serial link speed?
If you were to connect a USB/TTL converter then you could check the serial link speeds, and see if any data shows up. The STM32 sends "2D" upon powerup or reset, and if you send 'json' it should spit out lots of stuff. Newline character is required.

I believe my STM32 talks at 115200baud (although my ESP died rather randomly and exhibits similar symptoms) so that could be a good starting point.
I will need to work on a ESP for myself soon enough. Best of luck in the meantime!
-Isaac

[ZooKeeper]

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[MattsAwesomeStuff]

Hmm, I'm not sure I'm much help past this point because I didn't use the Olimex board.

What's your procedure you're following, and where is it failing or not getting results?

[dima]

I can suggest to "put on your programmer's hat on" and try to troubleshoot beyond ESP. Try to connect TX/RX directly into USB-TTL dongle (CH340/PL2303 ...of course with proper drivers installed). Open "putty" https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/la ... taller.msi and see if you can connect to Blue-Pill (selecting right COM and speed)

[ZooKeeper]

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[davidwagstaff]

UPDATE: After trying the available memory size options, I finally got everything to load!!!! Sill "FileNotFound" @ 192.168.4.1 however... UGH

Yet ANOTHER update..... SUCCESS!!!!!!!!

I have the same issue. Using Olimex Mod and Arduino IDE to flash. All seems to go ok but on the 192.168.4.1 page I get "file not found". What did you do to fix this?

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

I have a feeling this is one of those things where the instructions either aren't being followed, or, aren't correct for the very first time someone sets something up.

Else, a procedure should work exactly the same for everyone.

David - What procedure are you following? Link to it so we can know exactly what you did.

Getting File not Found when you go to the IP doesn't tell us much troubleshooting-wise other than that there's nothing at that IP. This could be because you did literally nothing, or that you got 99% of the way.

It could be something as simple as, you're connected to the wifi in your home rather than connecting to the ESP8266. You haven't given us anything to help you with.

[davidwagstaff]

Thanks for your reply Matt.
I have a Olimex Mod board and been trying to program with the Arduino IDE . I've got the boards loaded in the IDE. I've connected the board to USP-TTL as per instructions on page 1, moved solder bridge to 0.
Created folders with ino and data. as per arbers instructions on page 3.

If I open the ino file and with the correct board and port selected I can program the Olimex, everything appears ok. It gets to resetting the board and just sits there.

Then I've tried either waiting a while and trying the ESP data upload tool or manually resetting the board by powering it down and then trying. Either way it appears to load the SPIFF and gives completed messages.
I'll try again and take some screen shots.

[davidwagstaff]

FS Browser.PNG (8.03 KiB) Viewed 6449 times

This is the output screen from Arduino IDE.

Sketch uses 356800 bytes (34%) of program storage space. Maximum is 1044464 bytes.
Global variables use 28496 bytes (34%) of dynamic memory, leaving 53424 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 81920 bytes.
esptool.py v2.6
2.6
esptool.py v2.6
Serial port COM11
Connecting....
Chip is ESP8266EX
Features: WiFi
MAC: 5c:cf:7f:8d:b8:d3
Uploading stub...
Running stub...
Stub running...
Changing baud rate to 512000
Changed.
Configuring flash size...
Auto-detected Flash size: 2MB
Compressed 360960 bytes to 255263...

Writing at 0x00000000... (6 %)
Writing at 0x00004000... (12 %)
Writing at 0x00008000... (18 %)
Writing at 0x0000c000... (25 %)
Writing at 0x00010000... (31 %)
Writing at 0x00014000... (37 %)
Writing at 0x00018000... (43 %)
Writing at 0x0001c000... (50 %)
Writing at 0x00020000... (56 %)
Writing at 0x00024000... (62 %)
Writing at 0x00028000... (68 %)
Writing at 0x0002c000... (75 %)
Writing at 0x00030000... (81 %)
Writing at 0x00034000... (87 %)
Writing at 0x00038000... (93 %)
Writing at 0x0003c000... (100 %)
Wrote 360960 bytes (255263 compressed) at 0x00000000 in 5.4 seconds (effective 531.5 kbit/s)...
Hash of data verified.

Leaving...
Hard resetting via RTS pin...
[SPIFFS] data : C:\FSB\FSBrowser\data
[SPIFFS] size : 1004
[SPIFFS] page : 256
[SPIFFS] block : 8192
/ajax-loader.gif

/chart.min.js.gz

/gauge.min.js.gz

/gauges.html

/gauges.js

/index.html

/index.js

/inverter.js

/log.html

/log.js

/README.md

/refresh.png

/style.css

/wifi-updated.html

/wifi.html

[SPIFFS] upload : C:\Users\David\AppData\Local\Temp\arduino_build_792348/FSBrowser.spiffs.bin
[SPIFFS] address : 0x100000
[SPIFFS] reset : ck
[SPIFFS] port : COM11
[SPIFFS] speed : 512000
[SPIFFS] python : python3.exe
[SPIFFS] uploader : C:\Users\David\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages\esp8266\hardware\esp8266\2.5.2\tools\upload.py

Then on my phone I am changing to the ESP wifi and attempting to go to 192.168.1.4 and get "FileNotFound"

[dima]

All debug looks good, steps followed correctly. Maybe there is a bug with URL "/"?

Perhaps try full URL? -> http://192.168.4.1/index.html

[MattsAwesomeStuff]

And I'll just reitterate... on whatever device you're using to access the 8266, you're connecting to its wifi, not your home wifi, right? Could be a firewall issue too on your side.

What are you using to connect? Desktop, laptop, tablet, phone?

[davidwagstaff]

Yes Matt, I'm Connecting to the ESP wifi Via my iphone.

If I just try going to 192.168.4.1 without changing wifi I get site cannot be reached errors so definitely on the ESP.

Are there any files I've missed in the SPIFFS load?

[davidwagstaff]

Ok tried it on a Wemos Node Mcu Lolin and it is the same. must be something i'm missing.

Had a play with the ino code to see if I can debug. Changed the 2 "file not found" messages to "filenotfound1" and "filenotfound2"
Now i'm getting a file not found 1 message when I try to access webpage.

[dima]

Did you set maximum SPIFFS size?

arduino-esp-spiffs-max.png (9.64 KiB) Viewed 6359 times

Why not try command line?

Need these tools:

• Python 3.7+

• mkspiffs.exe

• esptool.py

Build

Code: Select all

mkspiffs.exe -c C:\FSB\FSBrowser\Data\ -b 8192 -p 256 -s 600000 flash-spiffs.bin

Flash

Code: Select all

python esptool.py --port COM1 --baud 115200 write_flash 0x100000 flash-spiffs.bin

[ZooKeeper]

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[davidwagstaff]

Well i'm not getting anywhere with this. It seems the Arduino IDE is not loading the spiffs. Has anyone sucessfully done this with a recent build of the Arduino IDE? I found some info about spiffs no longer being supported by the ESP8266 core
https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/ ... ystem.html

I am not familiar with using Python and have no idea how to follow the instructions that have been given previously to use this method. Any help would be greatfully received

[davidwagstaff]

Ok finally have success.

This seems to be a Arduino build compatibility issue. Loaded Arduino 1.8.0 on a different laptop and used ESP board core 2.6.2 and have successfully loaded sketch and spiffs to both NodeMCU and Olimex mod board.

[ZooKeeper]

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[MattsAwesomeStuff]

This seems to be a Arduino build compatibility issue. Loaded Arduino 1.8.0 on a different laptop and used ESP board core 2.6.2 and have successfully loaded sketch and spiffs to both NodeMCU and Olimex mod board.

This is what I fuckin' hate about open source. The complete an utter user unfriendliness of it, and the impossibility of an amateur to wade through it. You have to guess the correct thing it might be, that you maybe didn't even know was a thing that could even be correct or incorrect, and hope it works.

Good sleuthing to guess that maybe that was it and to try it out, needle in a haystack.