Help Programming ESP-12S With Frog Pin Programmer

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello,

I having been developing on Wemos D1 Mini platform for some time. Thought I would try to shrink my projects a bit and try to switch to the ESP-12S modules.

I purchased a, what I think you would refer to as a 'Frog Pin Programmer', for programming the boards.

Link for programmer: ESP8266 Test Board Burn Fixture Support ESP-12E ESP-12F ESP-07 And Other Modules Sale - Banggood USA sold out-arrival notice-arrival notice

I assumed this would be a straight forward process of inserting the ESP12S into the programmer, plugging in the programmer, and uploading my code and that was is.

However, the Arduino IDE is not recognizing the boards when I plug them in.

EDIT: I should note that pressing the reset or program buttons on the programmer do not help. Also the serial port is not displaying in Arduino IDE.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks!

2

I figured it out. I needed to install a driver from

to get the programmer to be recognized.

Hope that helps someone else.

3

Cute but horrendously expensive little module! :astonished:

The CP2102 USB-to-serial adapter was one of the two main and preferred alternatives to the FT232 some years back but has been overtaken by the cheaper Chinese-designed CH340. In both cases, you need to install a driver for Windoze, though Linux (Mint) supports them all automatically.

It is fascinating to see the CP2102 re-surface!

Banggood's search facility is pretty much useless (unless there is some concealed option to make it work)! :roll_eyes:

4

What do you do after you have soldered the ESP module onto your project, and you want to re-flash the ESP.

Maybe easier to have some pin-headers on the final product,
and flash by attaching a NodeMCU to it with Dupont wires.
Leo..

5

Good point Wawa! I have a Nodejs server setup with a Postgres database to store my firmwares.

I will have the ESPs periodically check for updates from my server using the ESP8266HTTPUpdate library. However, this doesn’t work well for testing so I may use your idea as well.

Thanks!

6

Watch this.
Ignore the capacitor part from 3:30.
You're NOT powering two processors, because the one on the NodeMCU is disabled (draws no current).
Leo..