Hello,
I recently bought a new ESP32 CH340C dev board.
Last week I successfully installed ESPHome on it and everything was working fine with Home Assistant.
Today I uploaded a simple program from the Arduino IDE, and it worked perfectly.
Now I want to reinstall ESPHome on the board, but when I click “Prepare for first use”, after the installation I get the following error:
“An error occurred. Improv Wi-Fi Serial not detected.”
I then opened the serial console, and here are the logs:
e[0;35m[C][wifi:060]: Starting
Local MAC: 20:E7:C8:70:85:8Ce[0m
ets Jul 29 2019 12:21:46
rst:0x3 (SW_RESET),boot:0x13 (SPI_FAST_FLASH_BOOT)
configsip: 0, SPIWP:0xee
clk_drv:0x00,q_drv:0x00,d_drv:0x00,cs0_drv:0x00,hd_drv:0x00,wp_drv:0x00
mode:DIO, clock div:2
load:0x3fff0030,len:6276
load:0x40078000,len:15736
load:0x40080400,len:4
load:0x40080404,len:3860
entry 0x40080634
I (57) boot: ESP-IDF 5.4.2 2nd stage bootloader
I (57) boot: compile time Sep 18 2025 00:28:51
I (57) boot: Multicore bootloader
I (59) boot: chip revision: v3.1
I (61) boot.esp32: SPI Speed : 40MHz
I (65) boot.esp32: SPI Mode : DIO
I (69) boot.esp32: SPI Flash Size : 4MB
I (72) boot: Enabling RNG early entropy source...
I (77) boot: Partition Table:
I (79) boot: ## Label Usage Type ST Offset Length
I (86) boot: 0 otadata OTA data 01 00 00009000 00002000
I (92) boot: 1 phy_init RF data 01 01 0000b000 00001000
I (99) boot: 2 app0 OTA app 00 10 00010000 001c0000
I (105) boot: 3 app1 OTA app 00 11 001d0000 001c0000
I (112) boot: 4 nvs WiFi data 01 02 00390000 0006d000
I (119) boot: End of partition table
I (122) esp_image: segment 0: paddr=00010020 vaddr=3f400020 size=28f28h (167720) map
I (187) esp_image: segment 1: paddr=00038f50 vaddr=3ff80000 size=0001ch ( 28) load
I (187) esp_image: segment 2: paddr=00038f74 vaddr=3ffbdb60 size=05760h ( 22368) load
I (199) esp_image: segment 3: paddr=0003e6dc vaddr=40080000 size=0193ch ( 6460) load
I (202) esp_image: segment 4: paddr=00040020 vaddr=400d0020 size=e311ch (930076) map
I (523) esp_image: segment 5: paddr=00123144 vaddr=4008193c size=1c384h (115588) load
I (583) boot: Loaded app from partition at offset 0x10000
I (583) boot: Disabling RNG early entropy source...
e[0;32m[I][logger:165]: Log initializede[0m
e[0;35m[C][safe_mode:084]: Unsuccessful boot attempts: 7e[0m
e[0;36m[D][esp32.preferences:143]: Writing 1 items: 0 cached, 1 written, 0 failede[0m
[0;32m[I][logger:165]: Log initializede[0m
e[0;35m[C][safe_mode:084]: Unsuccessful boot attempts: 7e[0m
e[0;36m[D][esp32.preferences:143]: Writing 1 items: 0 cached, 1 written, 0 failede[0m
e[0;32m[I][app:073]: Running through setup()e[0m
e[0;35m[C][component:163]: Setup preferences took 0mse[0m
e[0;35m[C][component:163]: Setup esp32_ble took 0mse[0m
e[0;35m[C][component:163]: Setup esp32_ble_server took 0mse[0m
e[0;35m[C][component:163]: Setup esp32_improv took 0mse[0m
e[0;35m[C][component:163]: Setup web_server_base took 0mse[0m
e[0;35m[C][component:163]: Setup captive_portal took 0mse[0m
e[0;35m[C][wifi:060]: Starting
Local MAC: 20:E7:C8:70:85:8Ce[0m
ets Jul 29 2019 12:21:46
rst:0x3 (SW_RESET),boot:0x13 (SPI_FAST_FLASH_BOOT)
configsip: 0, SPIWP:0xee
My first thought was that the Wi-Fi component was damaged, but I tested a simple Arduino sketch connecting to Wi-Fi and it worked — but only if I disable brownout detection using this command:
WRITE_PERi_REG(RTC_CNTL_BROWN_OUT_REG, 0);
I also tried plugging the board into a dev kit with a strong power supply, but the behavior is still the same.
At this point I suspect a hardware issue, but I’m not sure where to look next.
Does anyone have an idea or has seen similar behavior?
Any help is welcome.