@MickMorley had an problem with and ESP32. Therein he has links to others that had a similar problem. Just recently I had 5 ESP8266’s with what I would call corrupted configurations which kept the devices from connecting to the network. My problem with these appeared at the same time … power glitch?
Yet I had eight others that had weathered the corrupting condition. Interestingly three of the eight were using custom c++ code I developed using the Arduino IDE. Also, these three did not use flash memory for configuration, their configuration being “stored” on an MQTT broker.
Perhaps my expectations are set too high. My biggest concern is my irrigation system because I live in a desert. I had a failure here that nearly killed my experiment with blueberries.
Before I my foray into ESP I used Arduinos in a MySensors environment. I had problems (eg corrosion, fixed by electrical clear lacquer), of course, but not software corruption. For simple control devices like lights and switches, even stepper and servo motors, they work very as well as any ESP device and are cost competitive. The downside is that they are usually DIY, thus one has to be concerned with safety and enclosures.
I share my experience here in hopes of a discussion on robust devices, one’s that can be supported for as long as my house is standing.
I have 63 ESP devices around the house and all but one is ESP8266. The Wemos D1 Mini is my go-to device for anything ESPHome (or Arduino) because they are simple, reliable and darned cheap. I have never experienced anything remotely similar to what you describe.
The link you point to is hardware problem and possibly just power supply problem.
There are a lot of cheaply made boards. You must consider that when starting project with esp device and buy from reputable source or consistent source(one you used successfully or suggestion from others)
If only have my ratgdos and several units for test case. They all work consistently with no noticeable issue.
More precisely: Two units exhibited this: Tasmota 15. I connected a (opto-isolated) serial/USB and monitored the boot. The log indicated that it had connected to WiFi, but was failing to connect to the MQTT broker. Using the hold-GPIO0-to-ground technique, after many tries, I installed Tasmota and it rebooted. I set the configuration from my back up and the problem re-appeared. This time I used the power-off-30sec-6x-power-on-2sec-power-off-2sec to get to the default Tasmota state on the first try. I manually reconfigured. I haven’t had a problem since.
Three units stopped after the first log line. Used the power-on-off and manually reconfigured. Again, no problems since.
I have been using ESP-12F one of which exhibited this problem. Lower cost and energy usage than ESP32 (The Aliexpress vendor used no longer exists) The others were Sonoff D1 and Sonoff R2 basic. I also have employed an ESP-01 relay module (I don’t remember if this one went whack-a-do-do. I think it did)