Is my ESP8266 board broken?

Theguywhobea · January 21, 2020

Hi guys, trying to figure out of my board here is broken. It's a Wemos D1 Mini, with the full 18650 battery cell shield on the back. For the life of me I can't get this thing to flash, every USB cable I have tried has errored out in Windows with the error code that "Device Descriptor Request Failed".

So I figured if I couldn't use the built in USB port I would try an external flasher. I soldered wires to TX and RX on the D1 mini board, hooked up the other end to an FTDI chip I have used for flashing other ESP8266's in the past. However Arduino still can't flash anything through here, it fails connecting to the board every time, however if I go into Serial Monitor and cycle power to the board I see some boot garbled messages and then the message "ready". However it never responds to AT commands. This is about all I have been able to do so far. Is this board no good?

WereCatf · January 21, 2020

20 minutes ago, Theguywhobea said:

every USB cable I have tried has errored out in Windows with the error code that "Device Descriptor Request Failed".

Sounds like there's something wrong with either the USB-chip on it or the USB-connector. Still, just to make sure that it's that, remove the battery-shield and try the D1 Mini on another computer or under Linux and see if the error persists.

Theguywhobea · January 21, 2020

22 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Sounds like there's something wrong with either the USB-chip on it or the USB-connector. Still, just to make sure that it's that, remove the battery-shield and try the D1 Mini on another computer or under Linux and see if the error persists.

Yeah I've tried it with no battery, and I'm trying it on a Linux machine now, I don't see anything for this board show up when I do lsusb, and the Arduino IDE doesn't see anything at ttyS0 either.

WereCatf · January 21, 2020

39 minutes ago, Theguywhobea said:

Yeah I've tried it with no battery, and I'm trying it on a Linux machine now, I don't see anything for this board show up when I do lsusb, and the Arduino IDE doesn't see anything at ttyS0 either.

Yeah, sounds like the USB-chip or the USB-port might be somehow shorted and preventing the board from working right. You should be able to manually put the ESP into flash-mode by connecting GPIO0 to GND and then flashing it with your discrete FTDI-programmer.

Theguywhobea · January 21, 2020

14 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

Yeah, sounds like the USB-chip or the USB-port might be somehow shorted and preventing the board from working right. You should be able to manually put the ESP into flash-mode by connecting GPIO0 to GND and then flashing it with your discrete FTDI-programmer.

Yup, so I figured this shit out finally. I was being a bit of a noob with the serial pins. I figured connecting RX and TX would be enough, as soon as I wired in ground as well the Arduino IDE can download on here now. Seems like my onboard USB chip is probably busted (I may have given it a little static...) but programming direct through serial seems to work.

Cipulot99 · January 27, 2020

On 1/21/2020 at 7:14 PM, Theguywhobea said:

Yup, so I figured this shit out finally. I was being a bit of a noob with the serial pins. I figured connecting RX and TX would be enough, as soon as I wired in ground as well the Arduino IDE can download on here now. Seems like my onboard USB chip is probably busted (I may have given it a little static...) but programming direct through serial seems to work.

I've got the same with 5 (F*****G FIVE) boards.... the USB converter onboard is total crap! Yeah, when connecting different boards always hook up all of them on a common ground with a wire with each other otherwise the voltage references might not be all "alligned" the same.