@davee, thank you for a fabulous and informative reply. For what it's worth I'll try to answer the questions in the text, but I'm not expecting you to...

@zander, thank you for not responding "simply follow the instructions!". Which I would have done if I had the right component. it does matter to me...

Again sorry, the previous correction and apology didn't appear before I posted mine.

@robotbuilder Sorry, but Ohm's Law says V=-IR, so I= V/R. In other words Current is Voltage divided by Resistance. Fritigern

@dronebot-workshop, It took me weeks to solder and troubleshoot and get it working. I used the FTDi and a breadboard to program it, setting the FTDI o...

Continues- Confusing dialogue re hard reset is a message that the Arduino IDE sends to a lot of people who use it to program an ESP32 or 8266. It re...

Thanks answers to questions- 1All USB devices have a PID and a VID, A product serial number and a vendor identifier. Each device is unique and ena...

@Ron, I am sorry to bring up an ESP 8266, it was an example of why I do not get hung up on when an ESP board fails to identify its PID and VID to th...

Sort of update. The ESP board self identifies as a AI Thinker ESP32-CAM. No further details. Part of me thinks this has nothing to do with the board...

Thank you for the advice. I'll look at the ESP32CAM using the FTDI I wasted a lot of time a few months ago troubleshooting why a ESP 8266 didn't ...

@Ron, Yes, thank you. The sketch-that-worked-before problem was solved by the edit to make it compatible with the updated libraries, and the rest is...

@frogandtoad, Thanks. Fritigern

@Ron Thank you very much for taking the time to reply to my rant, and supplying the fix. So the original Bill- based sketch worked fine until I up...