ESP-01S cannot start after flashed with ESPHome

ESPHome
1

Hi guys. I wanted to hook a small ESP-01S board to the IKEA PM2.5 sensor. But after I flashed ESPHome to ESP-01S, it cannot connect to WiFi, or log anything through serial. Here’s my setup.

I have a USB TTL adapter, which is connected to ESP-01 by

  1. 3.3V → 3.3V
  2. GND → GND
  3. TX → RX
  4. RX → TX
  5. GPIO0 → GND (to boot in flash mode)

The port I used is /dev/cu.SLAB_USBtoUART. And here’s my bare minimal configuration

esphome:
  name: pm25
  platform: ESP8266
  board: esp01_1m

# Enable logging
logger:

# Enable Home Assistant API
api:

ota:
  password: "6d15727109167c3d8c95cee1f28c7090"

wifi:
  ssid: "REDACTED"
  password: "REDACTED"

  # Enable fallback hotspot (captive portal) in case wifi connection fails
  ap:
    ssid: "Pm25 Fallback Hotspot"
    password: "6Yc6IIL2gtLp"

captive_portal:

The flash was successful in ESPHome Dashboard. After rebooting ESP-01S with GPIO disconnected from GND, I can’t find any new device in my router’s IP page, nor was it shown as online in dashboard.

I tried to write a periodic Serial.println("Hello World"); in Arduino IDE and it worked fine. I can see the output from minicom.

Does anyone know what I was doing wrong here? Thanks!

Update: There’s no problem with flashing Tasmota.

2

So what does the log say? You are connected over serial, so it should be easy.

3

If it starts up and can’t connect to your wifi, it should time out and create the fallback AP “Pm25 Fallback Hotspot”; can you find that wifi network?

4

Unfortunately there’s no output from serial as well.

5

No backup wifi either. I’m starting to think if it’s the problem of a bad ESP01S. Will buy another one and try

6

The device is physically attached? When you flash, is there no log output as you upload? Post the last thing shown on esphome flasher.

7

Thanks for the help. I was flashing using the ESPDashboard so I can only see a graphic gauge indicating the progress without any output.

When I got home I’ll manually compile ESPHome and flash with esptool.py.

–

Interestingly, with the same steps I had no problem at all flashing an ESP32-CAM module

8

or…
Compile bins on HA/EspHome using manual/download
and then flash it with esphome-flasher with the downloaded bins earlier

9

No luck. Flashing went without any error. Still I’m not seeing it in the router, nor do I see anything coming out from serial port😞

10

I know this is very basic, but have you checked for errors in the SSID and password? You aren’t the first and won’t be the last to fall for this.

1 Like
11

You would still see this in the log via serial.

12

I have the same problem when I flash over serial via the browser.
What works for me is to download the esphome .bin file and then use tasmotizer to flash it :man_shrugging:
Alternatively, upload tasmota minimal and then tasmota’s ota over the web server also worked for me. Once EspHome is flashed, then OTA also works for me

13

Update to everyone:

Yes, compiling with the web dashboard and flashing with esptool.py did solve the the problem. Though not knowing that happened, I think it’s the current solution. I’m going to file a bug report to ESPHome.

14

Sorry for the bump but this is where google pointed me. I hope it’s ok.

I’ve had the exact same problem. I could flash using an FT232 but then nothing happened. As it turns out the power supply was probably the issue. Now I wired it up “through” a “normal” esp8266 and the same device worked as intended. The FT232 was supplying power to flash but somehow not sufficient to run.

I’m using a 10k resistor that isn’t mentioned in the screenshot. Not sure it’s required. I spent and entire day on this. First it turned out the cables were broken. Then the power was sufficient to flash but not run… Maybe this will help somebody else.

What helped me learn was:

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