Daniel Eichhorn
Today finally a new package from China arrived containing an ESP8266-ESP201 bought on aliexpress. I had ordered two pieces and each came in a little plastic bag and stuck in protective foam. The bag also contained a tiny antenna that can be plugged into the connector on the board.
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| Pin layout to your convenience: when plugged into a breadboard you cannot read the labels on the lower side of the PCB Please Note: GPIO15 remains connected even after flashing |
Board
I ordered the ESP-201 board because I was looking forward to finally own an ESP8266 module which was compatible with my bread board. Annoyingly the connectors for power supply and serial connection are placed in a way which by default doesn’t fit into a normal breadboard. You can however use pliers to bend the four pins in a 90 degree angle so that you can attach the connectors right to it (see picture):
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| ESP8266 ESP-201: bend TX, RX, 3.3V and GND pins to fit the module into a bread board |
Another annoying design mistake is that the labels for most of the pins are on the bottom side of the PCB. You can’t read the labels when the module is sitting on the bread board. Because of this I drew up the pin layout above. I hope it will help you…
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| The bottom side of the ESP201. As you can see, the pins are nice labeled, just on the wrong side |
Flashing Firmware
It took me a while until I figured out that I also had to connect GPIO15 to ground in order to get the board running. After that flashing worked fine and I could transfer the NodeMCU firmware without further problems to the chip.
Available Pins
It seems that all the usual pins are available. See this table here for mapping from the labels on the bottom of the field to the once often used in forums and other sources: https://github.com/esp8266/esp8266-wiki/wiki/Pin-definition
Especially noteworthy is the availability of the T_OUT pin which is the analog-digital-converter (ADC). I’m not 100% sure what the D0,D1, D2 and D3 pins are for. It might be that the are used for the SDIO mode, where you boot from a SD card.
Antenna
The board appears to have a built-in antenna but also offers a connector to the antenna that came with the package. The following table shows the average signal strength of (anonymized) access points in my neighbourhood after running the wifi.sta.getap command on the lua firmware 100 times. Once with the external antenna and once without:
| # of access point listed | avg signal strength [dbm] | |||
| w/ ext antenna | w/o | w/ ext antenna | w/o | |
| AP-1 | 100 | 97 | -70 | -82 |
| AP-2 | 93 | 18 | -88 | -92 |
| AP-3 | 2 | 0 | -92 | n/a |
| AP-4 | 94 | 1 | -86 | -94 |
| AP-5 | 4 | 0 | -93 | n/a |
| AP-6 | 16 | 0 | -89 | n/a |
| AP-7 | 99 | 97 | -80 | -84 |
| AP-8 | 19 | 0 | -91 | n/a |
| AP-9 | 5 | 0 | -92 | n/a |
| AP-10 | 100 | 100 | -31 | -32 |
| AP-11 | 100 | 100 | -31 | -32 |
| AP-12 | 98 | 87 | -89 | -91 |
| AP-13 | 40 | 0 | -92 | n/a |
| AP-14 | 4 | 0 | -91 | n/a |
| AP-15 | 1 | 0 | -91 | n/a |
| AP-16 | 16 | 0 | -93 | n/a |
| AP-17 | 13 | 0 | -93 | n/a |
| AP-18 | 81 | 92 | -89 | -92 |
| AP-19 | 22 | 0 | -90 | n/a |
| AP-20 | 47 | 38 | -91 | -92 |
| AP-21 | 99 | 75 | -78 | -89 |
| AP-22 | 95 | 87 | -81 | -89 |
| AP-23 | 6 | 0 | -90 | n/a |
As you can see, 12 access points were not even visible without the external antenna. All others had significantly worse signal strength without antenna. I realize that this test is not highly scientific but it might give you an idea how valuable the external antenna is.
Chip
My two boards are equipped both with the newer ESP8266EX chip. If anybody knows what the difference is to the version without “EX” please let me know. Nodemcu’s node.info() returns these values:
| flashisize | flashmode | flashspeed |
| 512 | 0 | 40000000 |
Quality
The board looks well processed but one of the two pieces came with pins not 100% perpendicular to the PCB. However, this doesn’t affect usage since both rows of pins are equally skewed.
Summary
If you don’t mind adapting some of the pins with pliers you get a great test board for a really good price (I paid $4.69, by now it’s even cheaper). Once adapted the module fits nicely into a bread board and you have one row of connectors left on each side of the board. It is a pity that the pins are only labeled on the bottom side but that might be changed in the future. However, for a price only slightly higher than a ESP-01 it is a pretty good module and has many pins more broken out as well. Especially the ADC offers new possibilities for experimentation. Just remember that the ADC measures values between 0 and 1V. The external antenna and the connector on the board is another aspect on the plus side. It is quite impressive how much more sensitivity this 15cm wire yields.
Links
Hi. I boutght a similar board on eBay but I can't get it to work.
I drive XPD, CHIP_EN, RST and IO0 to 3.3v and IO15 to ground.
I get the "ready" on the serial monitor but my board won't return OK to any AT command.
Do you have anything else connected?
I think you connected too much. You only have to connect GPIO15 to ground, CHIP_EN to high to run it. If you want to flash it connect GIPO0 to ground and quickly connect RST with ground to reboot. XPD is only required for deep sleep mode. But since you only seem to receive data from the ESP but can't send, maybe one of the RX or TX line is not connected? See http://www.electrodragon.com/w/ESP8266
I found the ESP8266SDK board for this chip, makes life so much easier for programing, wish I could figure out how to use all the built in stuff on the board though…
did you get it working yet ?
I have a lua script that creates a webserver to change all the outputs remotely, if you are interested
Unknown and Dani,
I have the same [similar] board from eBay. For me, the "thing" only works if I connect the RST pin (one after CH_PD) with the Reset pin on my CP2102. If the reset pin is off, I cannot flash firmware due to espcomm_sync_failed error.
Took a LONG time to figure ths out!
I think that if you run without the external antenna, you have no antenna at all – check the resistor in the board between the pcb antenna ant the connector – its connected only to external
Thanks for the tips on getting this board working, however there is a mistake in the first diagram. When looking from above, the top right pin needs to be pulled low while flashing, not the top left.
I have it hooked up to an FTDI as follows:
3.3v -> 3.3v
3.3v -> CHIP_EN
GND -> GND
GND -> IO0
TXD -> RX
RXD -> TX
DTR -> RST
RTS -> IO15
(My adapter doesn't have an RTS pin, just a hole, so I bent a jumper wire to stay in place)
Hope this helps!
Luca, I have connected everything like on Dani's diagram and it works fine on original fw and nodemcu. So only CHIP_EN and IO15 are necessary. It is interesting that in my case when I connected antenna I can see less APs and signal is weaker. I have no idea why.
BTW, do you mention one important thing – when you want to use in-bulit pcb antenna, you have to change position of the small resistor on the pcb ? If you will only not connect external antenna, then you are not using any antenna …
Check for a short from the middle pin to ground on the board. Some were manufactured with the connector rotated 90* leading to the middle pin being soldered to the ground connector in error.
EX means it has ADC
how to flash esp201 for use AT Command ?
what primary baud rate in esp201?
how to connect esp201 to arduino and control led?
thank you.
Hi great little article hear on the ESP201 I also had trouble flashing to begin with (Could do with some instructions) I also desoldered the Power, TX, RX and Ground pins and resoldered them onto the board so they face upwards as I was having trouble putting it on the breadboard with those 4 pins in the way. I think as far as ESP design goes this is one of the best so far. There are quite a few annoyances like you said the pins named on the underside but apart from that it is quite good.
Hi hoe i can connect to an externarnal battery and boot my module? Can any make a diagram of wiring? Regards
If you detach the external antenna, you need to resolder the 0 ohm resistor. Else, there is no connection to the internal PCB antenna, and then it makes sense that your results are significantly worse.