ESP-01 UART and turning it to a programmer

this is going to be a very quick video about an ESP well I should say ESP programmer I put this because I wanted an ESP programmer but this is actually like a serial USB interface for the very original ESP 0-1 modules and the oops sorry these are the ESP 0-1 modules which you have seen in previous video on some more on some yeah kids that I caught recently because I want to do some more work with this out by the way these kids let me just zoom at is what you probably have seen the video on this one is to relay module but also get this other one which is this temperature sensor module also works on an ESP zero one and because I need to for this one I did I think need to put the firmware on and for this other one I'm going to do a separate video where I test with this with a different firmware I want to be able to program these and it's not really difficult I mean it's you only need a couple of passives and a USB UART interface but I'm I'm just lazy so I just wanted to find something which is specifically designed for these boards and that's it so as you can see it has the same eight pin header and you just plug it in like so and then down you good you plug it into your USB and then you can program it or you could because this is designed as a USB to serial interface you probably know from any of my other videos in order to program an esp8266 you need to bring the GPIO 0 down to ground so that would need a button somewhere where you press when you want to program when you power it up otherwise if you're not pressed it just acts as a UART and then you can you know connect to serial port and you can see the messages so this one is missing that button so the first thing that I need to do is I need to put programming button on it and then we can use it as a programmer and also as a serial us monitor this actively I'm module is a little bit hard to find an icy station calm because I would expect that it contains the SPCA one because that's specifically on the ESP zero one but it only says esp8266 and doesn't say anything about FTDI or programmer so it is called the USB two by five module esp8266 pimp or cell phone pc wireless communication modules probably not the best description as you can see from the product page it contains a CH 340 USB to serial adapter so if your windows doesn't recognize the USB device automatically then search for this driver it is normally $2.99 us free shipping but at the moment it is selling at 225 us it turns out that I actually had to make two small changes to this converter so the first of all is I had to solder this button on so you press this while plugging it in if you want to program the chip otherwise it just acts as a normal you normal you are but I also had to put this jumper link in here to pull the chip enable pin to high to VCC that doesn't seem to impact the the UART functionality so it works even via or without that but it is definitely required for the programming so again if you want to turn this type of USB to ESP zero one board to a programming board solder these two pins together so if you hold it like this that's the first and the third pin in the left column and then put like a button which I just use this tactile switch and I'm just going to put it into a heat ring just to make sure it doesn't really short short out anything as it's flapping around in the breeze so the the button goes between the second and the fourth pin in the right column and before you start commenting I am aware that from different sources like eBay you can buy programmers again ESP 0-1 programmers which has a separate switch so you can switch them between UART mode and programming mode but if you happen to pick up something like this at least you know how to convert - like a programming USB converter so I plug there the USB in while the button was pressed and now the the laptop has finished compiling the sketch and as you can see it's uploading to the ESP so it works just like a programmer and if I plug it in without pressing the button then it just works as a UART so I can you know monitor be a serial traffic from the ESP and you can see the serial monitor working so the ESP just restarted and it's giving me the information well the way you would normally expect from a serial to USB converter and that's how it looks like with a heat shrink wrapped around the button and of course the bottle still works thanks for watching and hopefully see you in the next video

Channel: Csongor Varga

Views: 154,431

Keywords: esp8266, esp-01, uart, ftdi, programmer, arduino

Id: 6uaIWZCRSz8

Length: 5min 2sec (302 seconds)

Published: Sat Apr 21 2018