Mine looks exactly like the one in that picture, I followed every step to connect it to the UNO. When I plug in the UNO to my computer, the LED on the module blinks shortly. I opened up the Serial Monitor and set Line Ending to "Both NL and CR" and "Baud to 115200". Nothing appears there, but after typing "AT" in the command line, a few gibberish characters just appear. When typing "AT" several times, random "ERROR" appears. I just uploaded a blank code afterwards and nothing. I barely found those steps and the other results online are either misleading or outdated.
Re-read the site, had to plug the USB cable from UNO to my computer, open up the serial monitor, then connect the module to 3.3v, considering using an on-off switch. After that, the serial monitor gets this:
*some gibberish text in the first line*
Ai-Thinker Technology Co. Ltd.
ready
Tried "AT" command, getting a few gibberish characters again. Tried AT+CWMODE=1, same result then AT+CWLAP, ditto. How can I make this work correctly?
Trying to convert Arduino UNO to a Particle Photon ie, that's one way of saying it. I'm trying to make the module an access point and work with the UNO. Also forgot to mention, the wiring is definitely correct, I saw the WIFI of the module in my connections list.