Only with ESP8266: "avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding"

Development Tools IDE 1.x
1

I have 2 Arduino UNO's and three ESP8266 (two shields and one simple fella). The Arduno's work fine with everything else, but when I connect any of my ESP8266 to either of my Arduino's, i get the dreaded message:

avrdude: stk500_recv(): programmer is not responding
avrdude: stk500_getsync() attempt 1 of 10: not in sync: resp=0x00
... and so on

I would like to get my WiFi on, but my Ardunio's don't want to cooperate. Any ideas?

Ubuntu 15.10, 64-Bit.
IDE: 1.6.7

2

It would help if you could provide more information on how you are connecting the ESP to the Arduino.

3

One of them is a shield from SparkFun (https://www.sparkfun.com/products/13287). It is just connected like a normal shield. Actually I have two of these, and both have them give the same error.

The other one is a small cheap one like this:

It is connected like this:

The wierd thing is that the small cheap one gives the exact same error.

AND this is happening one two different Arduino UNO's...

4

When you program the UNO using USB it communicates with the '328 via pins D0 & D1. The ESP8266 is interfering with this process.

Try using SoftwareSerial to communicate with the ESP8266 on different pins?

5

I am not quite sure what that means. How would I go about doing that?

6 
#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
SoftwareSerial MySerial(7, 8); //Pick a more meaningful name!

Connect the ESP8266 Tx to D7, Rx to D8

Then instead of Serial.whatever use MySerial.whatever.

7

That is fantastic! That worked like a charm!

I only had to change it to

#include <SoftwareSerial.h>
SoftwareSerial MySerial(8, 9);

for my shield, because it had SW_TX on 8 and SW_RX on 9.

Thank you SO much!