Can't ping relay board

I’m trying to get started on ESPHome and bought one of these boards:

I’ve powered it up and checked my router to see if it had been recognised, but it doesn’t seem to have been. I’ve even pinged all the listed devices, whilst looking at the blue LED on the device to see if it flashes, in case I had missed a new device having been registered. (I looked at the board to see if it had a MAC address that I could look for - but it doesn’t. Should it have?)

Does the device have boot firmware to enable a connection to be made, or does it need to do be initially flashed? Any help to get me started would be very welcome!
Jim

Why don’t you ask the seller? Frankly your post has nothing to do with esphome. It is about the manufacturer’s firmware.

Thanks for the reply nickrout - frankly!

Have you flashed the ESP-01s with some firmware that is set up to connect to your wireless network? From the factory, those come with no firmware or some weird undocumented firmware of dubious quality/value.

The ESP-01s thus needs to be flashed to your chosen firmware via a TTL level serial port. I prefer Tasmota. Configure the relay as Relay1i on GPIO2.

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Thanks ‘AaaronCake’ - I get it now. I assumed that the ESP-01 came with some generic firmware that enabled WiFi connection.

Any reason to chose Tasmota over ESPHome? I’ve flashed Tasmota on devices before, but wonder whether ESPHome offers anything extra in the way of facilities or ease of use.
Jim

I just prefer Tasmota because it is just so much more convenient to simply flash a binary (or compile from source and flash) then set up than it is for me to set up a Docker infrastructure, Docker container for ESPHome, flash the device initially, forgot that I didn’t include a static IP so it is unstable, reflash, etc.

I’ve actually had one of those relay boards on my porch light for 4+ years and it hasn’t missed a beat. Will eventually be replaced by Ethernet, when I get around to it (when I fully automate my porch, not just the light).

Thanks again ‘AaronCake’. I’ve flashed Tasmota before, so I might just go with your recommendation.
Jim

I’ve flashed the device with Tasmota, but I can’t get the relay to work. There is no Relay1i in the drop-down list of the Sonoff or Generic modules. The device is responding, because if I allocate Relay2 to GPIO2 I get a blue led come on when I operate ‘Toggle 2’.

Jim

Ugh, sorry, my mistake.

The relay is on GPIO0.

Here’s a screenshot of my Tasmota config on one of those modules.

GPO0 did the trick - thanks!
I used the ESP01 template as well.