Author Topic: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.  (Read 25260 times)

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Offline Stonent

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #25 on: April 12, 2015, 02:48:45 am »
My esp8266 showed some signs of life while I was trying to get a serial connection to it. I could see it on a WiFi scan. Then suddenly it got really hot and stopped working despite  nothing being shorted or wired up wrong. This was after having it for several days   It just suddenly said I'm tired of this crap, I'm outta here.

I checked all connections. No shorts.
« Last Edit: April 12, 2015, 06:42:03 am by Stonent »
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Online PeterFW

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #26 on: April 12, 2015, 03:03:13 am »
I checked all connections. No shorts.

That is the price you pay for incredibly cheap china hardware, that is something wich has to be expected.
If you pay 3 bucks for something that usually costs 30, there has to be a catch :)
 

Offline Stonent

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #27 on: April 12, 2015, 06:48:05 am »
I checked all connections. No shorts.

That is the price you pay for incredibly cheap china hardware, that is something wich has to be expected.
If you pay 3 bucks for something that usually costs 30, there has to be a catch :)

I bought the one with all the little castellations on the sides because I wanted the I/O.  I took some perfboard and put some .1" headers on it and used resistor leads coming up angled inward slightly and soldered them to the cutouts.  The 8266 hovered over the perfboard after doing that but I could plug it into a breadboard at least.

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Offline Stonent

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #28 on: April 12, 2015, 07:42:04 am »
I checked all connections. No shorts.

That is the price you pay for incredibly cheap china hardware, that is something wich has to be expected.
If you pay 3 bucks for something that usually costs 30, there has to be a catch :)

Where is it sold for $30? Aside from it being nowhere, I don't accept the logic of your initial sentence.

I understood the statement as a similar device that has an MCU and wifi on one board.
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Offline Frost

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #29 on: April 12, 2015, 07:50:36 am »
Where is it sold for $30?
An Atmel SAM W25 should be somewhere in this region.
 

Online PeterFW

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #30 on: April 12, 2015, 08:00:54 am »
Where is it sold for $30? Aside from it being nowhere, I don't accept the logic of your initial sentence.

Something similar, comparable, same functionality.
Board, antenna, antenna connector, RF, stack, logic and so forth.

Last time i checked every other WiFi product was around that $30 price range in low/single quantity.

 

Offline Tuppe

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #31 on: April 12, 2015, 10:42:34 am »
Where is it sold for $30? Aside from it being nowhere, I don't accept the logic of your initial sentence.

Something similar, comparable, same functionality.
Board, antenna, antenna connector, RF, stack, logic and so forth.

Last time i checked every other WiFi product was around that $30 price range in low/single quantity.
Close, but not quite. Last time I quickly checked (5 minutes ago)

WiFi SoCs 1 piece price:
MT7681 6€
AR9331 16€
CC3200 16€

Most of those don't come in header form, but whacking it on a standard breakout isn't hard to do.
Obviously ESP8266 has driven those prices down single-handledly.
 

Offline dannyf

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #32 on: April 12, 2015, 11:47:31 am »
Seems to be most people have no problem getting those things to work, with some exceptions, :)

Quote
Obviously ESP8266 has driven those prices down single-handledly.

Yeah. If you go back just a little bit, those modules were considerably more expensive. $30 was a good number.
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Offline YansiTopic starter

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #33 on: April 12, 2015, 12:15:37 pm »
Some people have problem staying off this forum for a single hour. 
 

Offline SL4P

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #34 on: April 12, 2015, 12:25:27 pm »
...? Howewer the whole OSHW stuff probably is. I havent seen any arduino instructable suggesting to connect any of the remaining gpios, have you?
You call yourself an engineer, but the extent of your understanding this chip is based on 'instructables'...LOL.
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Offline YansiTopic starter

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #35 on: April 12, 2015, 12:53:00 pm »
And on what should I base my knowledge of this chip, if there is none documentation? Sorry, I cant do chinese nor have I willingness to learn it.

If you know, where full english documentation is, provide us with it. I think a whole bunch of people will become satisfied more than enough.

 

Offline dannyf

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #36 on: April 12, 2015, 01:22:29 pm »
Some people have problem staying off this forum for a single hour.

No need to despair. Your problem is fairly easy to solve: ask your parents to install parental control software on  your computer and wola, your problem gone and life is good again.
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Online PeterFW

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #37 on: April 12, 2015, 02:58:49 pm »
And on what should I base my knowledge of this chip, if there is none documentation? Sorry, I cant do chinese nor have I willingness to learn it.

I think you may be a good example of the modern school system wich values the skill of memorizing more then thinking, understanding and associating.

You bought something without anny reasarch, expected someone else to allready have done all work and now you are throwing a tantrum...

The second result for "ESP8266 pinout" gives you every information you have to know on how to get the board to respond to a ping.
Allthough the second hit may be google search bubble enhanced... personal experiance may vary.
http://www.electrodragon.com/w/ESP8266

Oh... my biggest problem was that just nothing worked, no blinky, no data, no nothing, only a constand 80mA current draw.
Took me a while to figure out that it was my power supply, i had set it to 150mA.
During bootup the board draws way more for a very, very short time.
So short that it dit not trip the over current protection but kept to board from booting properly.
 

Offline YansiTopic starter

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #38 on: April 12, 2015, 03:36:19 pm »
I think you may be a good example of the modern school system wich values the skill of memorizing more then thinking, understanding and associating.

Yes, example of what people like you have made the today's school systems look like. Not fault of my generation. I haven't built the school system. And please stop mentioning school here, because school gave me nothing, compared to what I've learnt myself. And I also do NOT agree with the state of our local school system. (Not only school, the whole system here is a pile of turd, recently I have read, that a crippled shit missunderstood by our dumb politicians in our law possibly makes a total ban of coin cell batteries in our country in October this year). I am looking forward for their next action.

Quote
You bought something without anny reasarch, expected someone else to allready have done all work and now you are throwing a tantrum...

If you buy for example TL074, would you expect that you will have to dig for for every parameter of it throughout the web? That someone measured its bias currents, someone else figured out the pinout, etc... or would you just expect downloading a full featuring datasheet, then read it and make the thing working using its specsheet?

Do you think, that expectation of proper documentation is fault of school education?  :-DD  That was a good one...

No, this page wasn't so close to the top here. This one I have dug out later. Although it is a good one to start with, I'd not consider it as documentation. It is quite incomplete. or example, where can I list the WHOLE set of AT commands for specific FW version? The one listed there is quite short.

Still no explanation why my module boots at 75.7kbaud. But I hope someone will come and say I haven't done research or haven't read the documentation. (which one?)  :-D



Tommorow I am going to put the module on power analyser to see the real consuption (also in time). And will compare consuption on different module types.

For those wandering what I consider good documentation, see for example this nice GPRS module: http://source.sierrawireless.com/resources/#tags=AirPrime%7Cq2686 (Hope the link will bring you where I expect)
« Last Edit: April 12, 2015, 04:02:30 pm by Yansi »
 

Online PlainName

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #39 on: April 12, 2015, 04:53:41 pm »
Quote
If you buy for example TL074, would you expect that you will have to dig for for every parameter of it

Don't know about  them, but I would have checked what documentation is available and then figured whether it was worth my time to hack it or best look at something more professional.

Though having said 'professional', I can assure you (and I would have thought you would know if you are in the design business) that really quite serious kit can suffer from lack of documentation, or even misleading documentation.

Mind, I can remember when acquiring documentation meant phoning the manufacturer and then waiting for some books (if you're lucky) or leaflet to drop through the letterbox. The likes of Google have spoiled today's generation, where you can go from zero to apparent expert in a few mins of browsing. I keep wondering what's going to happen when the original sources of info - guys like the ones you don't want to listen to in this thread - are gone and replaced by only consumers of info - guys that rely on others having done the work for them, via instructables or whatever. Seems to me that Googling is going to start coming up short, and development skills will again become pretty useful.

Fortunately, I came late to this thread :)
 

Offline zapta

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #40 on: April 12, 2015, 05:08:34 pm »
The rants so far are about documentation (datasheet), firmware (e.g. AT commands and 1024 only SSL) but not about the ESP8266 itself, so that's a good sign because these are things that can be improved by the vendor and the community.

I would be more concerned if the ESP8266 itself would be faulty and unreliable.
 

Offline YansiTopic starter

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #41 on: April 12, 2015, 05:13:53 pm »
Mmmm no, I am not from design. Design is my everyday hobby, so far. Not enough knowledge yet, one must successively make his way to the design world.

Quote
Don't know about  them, but I would have checked what documentation is available and then figured whether it was worth my time to hack it or best look at something more professional

Thats true, I can't complain about that. It successfuly  completed our objective, which was mostly just to "test it" and see, where it gets you. I kinda haven't expected so much scattered documentation. I am used to use standard more-or-less of the shelf parts, which mostly have accessible complete documentation, which can be simply applied and the product used.

Maybe I overreacted a bit (it happens, I am bit of choleric person; luckily no hammer is never near me bcs I would widlarize stuff rather quickly),  after going through some tens of pages, one can learn anything he needs about the ESP. Then it is really no hard process to deal with the traps the module throws at you.

Ultimately, if it works, it works fine or fine enough that it is a good value for the money. Hopefuly I'll work out some handy usage for the module.


zapta: By mentioning the reliability.. tommorow I'll conduct a consuption analysis. I suspect the other module is somewhat damaged, it got hot rather quickly. It worked, but the operating temperature was interesting. My module I have here on the table doesn't get even near that hot when operating. It is only warm. I will share the results.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #42 on: April 12, 2015, 05:53:56 pm »
Some people have problem staying off this forum for a single hour.

No need to despair. Your problem is fairly easy to solve: ask your parents to install parental control software on  your computer and wola, your problem gone and life is good again.

If you don't have anything to contribute to the actual thread shut up and go away!
 

Offline zapta

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #43 on: April 12, 2015, 06:23:04 pm »
zapta: By mentioning the reliability.. tommorow I'll conduct a consuption analysis. I suspect the other module is somewhat damaged, it got hot rather quickly. It worked, but the operating temperature was interesting. My module I have here on the table doesn't get even near that hot when operating. It is only warm. I will share the results.

Do a visual inspection of the modules. There were some reports on poor workmanship such as crystals assembled in a wrong orientation.

My guts feeling is that the ESP8266 itself is a solid chip but we actually buy modules from small vendors that add the typical quality you expect from ebay/China. For example, the standard flash IC (that's second IC on the module) seems to have low endurance rating (number of good writes) and I had to replace a few but that not the ESP8266 itself.

Olimex now have their own OSH modules with Eagle files and, I think, better flash and workmanship so basically all we need is a good supply of the core ESP8266.

https://www.olimex.com/Products/IoT/MOD-WIFI-ESP8266/open-source-hardware
 

Offline dannyf

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #44 on: April 12, 2015, 06:38:16 pm »
Quote
I would have checked what documentation is available

Documentation doesn't seem to be a problem for those amaturer Arduino guys.

Only the "professionals" seem to struggle with the "lack of documentation" here.
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Offline Simon

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #45 on: April 12, 2015, 06:47:27 pm »
Quote
I would have checked what documentation is available

Documentation doesn't seem to be a problem for those amaturer Arduino guys.

Only the "professionals" seem to struggle with the "lack of documentation" here.

And I now look forward to 2 weeks of peace from these idiotic posts!
 

Offline YansiTopic starter

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #46 on: April 12, 2015, 08:08:12 pm »
zapta: Will do a visual check. 

From what I can tell after one afternoon of experiments - I observed, that the chip probably has good performance radio.  The sensitivity with an external antena chopped of an old Asus router is surprising. Finds about 7 to 10 networks, compared to anything I have at home which can find 4 of them at best. For those far networks the ESP gives reading of under -80dBm, record is network at a level of -95dBm.

Has anyone measured the real output power? The claimed 300mW (+25dBm) is quite respectable power, considering that maximum 100mW EIRP is allowed here.

I also searched for bare chips, some time ago. I thing the can be found, but the prices were higher than the modules, if I remember that right. I should look again now. I don't like sticking any unnecessary modules to my boards. And custom implementation seems possible here, only the output LNA trace should have desired impedance of 50 ohm.

//seems OK now: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-shipping-10pcs-lot-IC-CHIP-ESP8266-Serial-wireless-WIFI-chip-100-New-and-original-esp8266/32256889807.html
« Last Edit: April 12, 2015, 08:42:34 pm by Yansi »
 

Offline zapta

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #47 on: April 13, 2015, 02:28:12 am »
//seems OK now: http://www.aliexpress.com/item/Free-shipping-10pcs-lot-IC-CHIP-ESP8266-Serial-wireless-WIFI-chip-100-New-and-original-esp8266/32256889807.html

Good to know, I will order me a few. Since Olimex released the eagle layout I will just copy the RF section and will flatten my design.  Also ordered these ones, I think they are replacements for the flash ICs.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/251711518945?_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT
 

Offline zapta

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #48 on: April 13, 2015, 02:29:43 am »
And I now look forward to 2 weeks of peace from these idiotic posts!

Not fair, Danny will have a life for two weeks while we are squabbling here.
 

Offline YansiTopic starter

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Re: ESP8266 WiFi Rant.
« Reply #49 on: April 13, 2015, 11:16:37 pm »
Bringing the measurements.  Unfortunately I forgot I've wanted  to measure also startup currents. The results look pretty interesting, I must say. Sometimes, the peak goes a bit over 300mA.

Also looks like the MCU sleeps and is periodically woken up.
 


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