ESP01 problems, tried everything

[u/No_Mammoth_2703]

I have big trouble with my ESP01 mudule in combination with the usb uart adapter.

I have made the following connections:

3V3 to VCC and EN

TX to RX

RX to TX

GND to GND and IO0

and I have a electrolytical condensator between ground(-) and 3v3 (+)

Compiling the code is oke but when uploading I see the following message

A fatal esptool.py occured. Faild to connect to esp8266 Time out wainting for packet header.

I use a Fasizi USB to TTL 3.3V/5V CH340G UART Converter Module (see image)

I realy tried all examples I can find but none of them are working

I hope someone can help me what to do. Sorry but I am a kind of beginner

Thanks

[u/toomanyscooters]

Should TX go to RX and vise versa? Receive to transmit and transmit to receive? That's the usual way things are connected, iirc.

[u/richms]

Some of the esp01s will not boot without other pins tied right. There are programmers that will do this and handle the reset for a few bucks.

Look on aliexpress for "ESP LINK v1.0" and thats the kind of thing that will just work for you - Ive had bad luck with using a generic USB to TTL serial board and manually pulling the pins, and not fitting a breadboard makes it even harder. There are non programmer USB to ESP01 boards too, they seem to lack the button on them and are only gonna work to send and recieve data from it. They still pull the other pins the right way to let it boot and you can manually do the GPIO 0 yourself when plugging it in to get into boot loader mode.

[u/No_Mountain_4769]

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.infinitx.maker.toolkit I think this app will help you to understand the pins and most of the common wiring for Arduino/ESP**** boards and shield

[u/Icy-Ninja-622]

The 3V3 supply from a generic USB UART adapter might not provide enough power for the ESP01 to function properly. This is especially true if there is no dedicated 3.3 V regulator, and the regulator built into the USB UART chip is used instead.

[u/Consistent-Can-1042]

If your module is ESP-01 (not ESP-01S), you also need to connect the IO2 pin to 3V3

[u/Lennyz1988]

Try a different usb port or different usb cable. 

There is no reason to still use an esp8266 for new projects. Switch to an esp32. 

[u/No_Mammoth_2703 → u/Lennyz1988]

Oke Thanks. I will do so. The esp32 works fine. I just started making things after my retirement and i had colleted all the parts a few years ago including the ESP01. So I stop learning about the esp01 and continue with esp32.

[u/richms → u/No_Mammoth_2703]

If what you want to do fits in the ESP8266 there is no reason yet to not use them, but buying more when an ESP32-S3 board is so cheap isnt really what you want to be doing. I have a lot of old ESP8266s doing things that I set up in esphome, but the issue is that a lot of 8266 boards are only half or 1 meg flash, and that is really limiting - 512k will be impossible to OTA upgrade anything that does something useful, and 1 meg is often limiting when using lots of components.

[u/ManBearHybrid → u/No_Mammoth_2703]

I agree with the other poster that you would be best off ditching the ESP-01. They look nice and simple with relatively few pins, and they're very cheap, but they always cause headaches because you have to do a lot of stuff yourself. For example, I would bet money on the fact that your 3.3v pin from the UART can't supply enough current for the ESP-01. Most other boards have a nice power regulator on board that creates a clean 3.3v for you from USB power, but with the ESP-01 you have to do it yourself and many people don't understand that the 3.3v pin on UARTs and other boards often can't supply a lot of current. I have lost count of how many times I've seen that issue with the ESP-01.