Page 1 of 2

REPL not working

Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2016 2:13 am
by mwawrzyniec
I flashed a raw esp8266 with the latest bin an received no errors, when I tried a serial connection through putty it appears to connect. Once it loads it hangs up. I've tried resetting the esp and then re connecting through putty with no luck. I tried changing the baud rate to 9600, no luck. When I hit keys on the keyboard I see activity OK the ftdi board but nothing shows up on the screen and I see no activity on the esp. I ungrounded gpio0 and reset the esp with no change. Anyone have any suggestion's?

Re: REPL not working

Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2016 6:41 am
by pythoncoder
The baud rate should be 115200.

Re: REPL not working

Posted: Thu Aug 18, 2016 10:03 am
by mwawrzyniec
Sorry, I left that out of my original post. That's the baud rate I started and am currently trying.

Re: REPL not working

Posted: Fri Aug 19, 2016 7:01 am
by pythoncoder
It might be worth trying

Code: Select all

esptool.py erase_flash
before re-flashing the firmware.

Failing that I suggest you provide more details such as the make and model of the ESP8266 board, the command line you're using to flash the firmware and the amount of flash memory on your board. The fact that you're using an FTDI interface suggests your ESP may be one of the less commonly used boards. Perhaps someone has experience with the same model.

Re: REPL not working

Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2016 12:16 am
by mwawrzyniec
Thank you for the reply. I erased the memory before flashing it. The chip that I'm using is a generic ESP-07. I have attached a screen shot of the onboard repl when I attempt to connect through putty.

Re: REPL not working

Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2016 5:53 am
by pythoncoder
How much flash memory does your board have? When you flash the firmware, are you using the --verify argument? If the board doesn't have sufficient flash to install the firmware it could explain your problem - but in this case --verify would tell you that it had failed.

Re: REPL not working

Posted: Sat Aug 20, 2016 6:22 am
by Sebastian
I also flashed some raw boards with a ftdi breakout board attached.
What happens if you leave the putty connection open and powercycle the ESP board?
Did you get any output?
Did you also checked your settings for the serial connection? Especially the flow control option?

Re: REPL not working

Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 2:59 pm
by platforma
Did you disconnect the pin that turns the bootloader mode before powering it back up after flashing? Reset the chip while connected via putty, you'd be able to tell if it's still in bootloader mode if it prints garbage.

Re: REPL not working

Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 5:02 pm
by dhylands
The fact that the USB Mass Storage device is showing suggests that the pyboard is in fact running.

I imagine its a driver issue, but I'm not familiar enough with the Windows driver morass to know how to go about debugging it.

Was the pybcdc.inf file (included on the USB Mass Storage file system) installed on the Windows host?

Re: REPL not working

Posted: Tue Aug 23, 2016 5:37 pm
by pythoncoder
@dhylands It's a "generic ESP-07", not a Pyboard. I gather some of these have only 512KiB of flash: is this enough? That was why I suggested --verify to determine whether the flash had correctly loaded.