AT firmware

@douwebakker I did, 8 tests and only one resulted in a reply. I think your premise might not be right. I think there might be a different way, I will try to find some time to look this afternoon.

Hi @douwebakker,

  At risk of pointing out the obvious, if you have a spare ESP8266 which you think has the software intact, and two USB serial cards, try starting with that to see if it responds to the commands listed in the Espressif notes .. so long as you stay clear of any that do things like update software or otherwise change the card configuration, it shouldn't damage anything ... but obviously it is at your risk!

If you only have 1 serial card, you might be able to use an Arduino + Arduino IDE and serial monitor to at as the second USB card.

In either case, start by temporarily connecting Tx of one card to Rx of the other, and show they are both talking and listening, before moving onto using ESP8266, etc.

--------------

I notice putty is mentioned ... that should work, but I guess any reasonable terminal program should do.

In the (distant) past, I have used TeraTerm with Windows to talk to a processor board via USB to serial card ... free download see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tera_Term for some description and links

... though I only had 1 USB card .. my quick glance at the Espressif site earlier showed two cards being required .. I don't know how it will react to that situation .. maybe you can get two instances to run at the same time?

Good luck, Dave

Posted by: @zander

@douwebakker Do you know about the nerds? and the espressif 8266 documentation websites.

https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html

Thanks for the link

@douwebakker I do have a fancy version of putty but it is trying to update without success. If I get back into it, how do I connect it to the esp8266?

@zander,  Hi Ron, You asked me how I hooked things up to read the ESP8266. Well, I am using this serial programmer.

As mentioned before, you can use the serial monitor from both the IDE and Putty.

These are my Putty settings. The com port can be different.

And this is my Putty output

Below you can see the serial monitor of the IDE

@douwebakker Sorry, I don't use any hardware that looks like that. Also, what I recall is you said you just entered AT and got a response. What you are showing me is the blink output, that has nothing to do with the original topic. 

This is working normally, where is the problem?

@douwebakker This is what you said and when I tried got nothing.

Normally you can give AT commands via the serial monitor and the ESP answers back. For example, command "AT" returns "OK". And so the comaand "AT+RST" restarts the ESP8266.

Out of 2 boards, 4 tests each only one returned anything and it was a blank line then a line containing ERROR. It would help if you could show us a link to an Expressif document that outlines this test procedure.

@zander There's no problem. Maybe we don't always understand each other. As said before, English is not my native language.
 

@douwebakker True, but you changed the problem entirely.

Please show me the Espressif docs that tell me how this AT command works.

@zander https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-at/en/latest/esp32/AT_Command_Set/Basic_AT_Commands.html

@douwebakker Thank you. I checked that doc and see it does not apply to me, I have USB connections only and larger ESP8266 boards. This is not anything I would be interested in and it is not anything this forum has looked at so I will unsubscribe from any further updates. Good luck with whatever the heck you are doing.

@douwebakker I very quickly found a lot of AT libraries and of course samples, probably over 50 samples for 8266 esp32, PICOW. The major difference being I thought you said the AT command would work with NO software loaded. I suppose it's possible, but I have yet to see instructions how to do that. Does the bootloader have at AT engine? Why? What can it be used for, I thought it was single minded.

@zander I can't say anything about it. I am also just a beginner. I have a book by elektor and it was described in it, but actually it is too difficult for me.

@douwebakker 

 I have a book by elektor and it was described in it, but actually it is too difficult for me.

That is annoying.  I don't actually have the book myself so I can't work through it to help with whatever you found too difficult.  There may be free information online that explains it better?  I actually bought an ESP8266 and a USB serial adapter which I think is required to program it but haven't got around to programming it yet.  I also bought an esp32 and an esp32-cam but they are both also waiting for a day when I can find the time to try them out as well!!

@robotbuilder I have a lot >20 esp8266, esp32, esp32-cam and only a few cam boards need a FTDI, all the rest are straight USB. For the esp32cam boards, get some MB boards to mount them in, that way you get USB, reset and boot buttons. esp32-mb search on amazon should do it. I can't remember the last time I used an FTDI board. I probably have at least 6 different kinds that I have NEVER used. Bad timing on my part.