With that said it’s only flashed using a USB to TTL adapter for the initial flash. After it’s hooked up to ESPHome it connects wirelessly to your. HA server so it wouldn’t be able to communicate over the TX/RX ports but can still get powered with the 5V and ground wires from the USB to TTL adapter. At least not in anyway I’m aware of as these adapters are typically only used to flash ESP32 or ESP8226 (or whatever the non BT, wifi only varient is named).
Unless you mean just flashing and not controlling through the adapter although I would personally get a slightly better USB to TTL adapter for.flashing with this cable just for power if that’s the case. Better ones out there with jumpers to switch between 3V and 5V and according to the video it needs to be flashed with 3 volts and this TTL USB adapter only has a 5 volt output. Raspberry pi would still need possibly only this plugged in for power, not an electrician but have powered some Pi’s in the past with not enough watts and they ran but SD cards lastest 2 months because of it.
Here is a good video on the flashing process and he shows just powering it using just those 2 cables as it has to be flashed with 3v, at least according to the video. The flashing process is at the 3 minute mark. The video references the same diagram in the solution.
Jump to the 12m 40s mark The 5V and GND wires just seem like a convenient way to power it because even Sonoff came out with an official dock but from what I can tell they have zero documentation on how to power the the NSpanel with the supported doc (or NSPanel pro) or any included cabling. Just the 3D printed shell like in the original link but uglier, at least IMO.
This cable is just more convenient for power only because no USB to TTL adapter in-between the USB port and panel. You just don’t hook up any of the data pins which could easily be hidden in the dock for those like me who don’t want it hooked to a wall socket.
FYI, I had some issues with the USB TTL adapter coming loose so I ordered some 22AAWG 2 wire cable and a replacement 2 prong power adapter and this solution works much better as the wire is screwed in securely Into the hot and neutral inputs which can be screwed down very tightly. I’ve been running it for over a week with your issues in the unit does not get hot at all or has caused any issues like random reboots or freezing.
Just make sure to hooke the hot wire to the hot power input. In the US it’s the shorter one. There were some disagreements about whether this mattered. In retrospect it may have been better to order a 3 prong adapter even though the ground wire isn’t used because it can’t be hooked up wrong unless you get the wiring backwards on the adapter.
I have some 12AWG wire I am going to use. Originally I ordered the 22 because the max current was 5.5 watts but I don’t believe that will matter but if it causes any issues I will report back.
anyway, maybe someone knows the exact name of this connector so that something like this can be ordered (you should know the exact dimensions of 1.25 or 1.5 mm, it is problematic to specify exactly) PITCH 2x4 female with wires
