ESP8266: flashing NodeMCU V1.0 on Mac OS X (or ESP8266 ESP-12E in general?)

Daniel Eichhorn — Fri, 15 May 2015 10:38:00 +0000

A few days ago a package arrived from SeeedStudio: the new NodeMCU board V1.0 (see picture)

The NodeMCU V1.0 (picture from here)

On paper it has some nice advantages compared to the old V0.9 version or also to other ESP8266 dev boards: you can directly connect it to your computer for programming and you won’t need an additional USB-to-Serial programmer or an external power supply. The USB connector does the job. The only problem: they must have changed something on the interface. Flashing doesn’t work out of the box anymore:

stdin:1: open a file first

is what I got when trying to upload a file with the ESPlorer to the module…

I’m programming on a Mac, so all the fancy Windows based flashing tools won’t work for me directly. I usually use the adapted Arduino IDE or the esptool.py to upload new images to the device. This posts describes how you can flash the new hardware despite the problems with the esptool. Basically it shows how you can use the original Windows tool from Espressif from your Mac OS X system, even if it is made for Windows.

Download and install driver for the CP2102 from here: https://www.silabs.com/Support%20Documents/Software/Mac_OSX_VCP_Driver.zip
If you don’t already have it install homebrew: http://brew.sh/
Install wine:
```
brew install wine 
```
I had to work around some issues with brew and wine. Write a comment if you want to know how I resolved them…
Download the latest Flashing tool from Espressif:
http://bbs.espressif.com/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=433
Install unrar (if you don’t already have it):
```
brew install unrar
```

Unpack the flash tool:

unrar x FLASH_DOWNLOAD_TOOLS_v1.2_150512.rar

Install unrar (if you don’t already have it):
```
brew install unrar
```

Enter the directory and start the Flashing Tool:

cd FLASH_DOWNLOAD_TOOLS_v1.2_150512
wine flash_download_tool_v1.2_150512.exe

Now that the wine directory has created enter the dosdevices folder and create a symlink to your NodeMCUs tty device:
```
cd ~/.wine/dosdevices
ln -s /dev/tty.SLAB_USBtoUART com1
```
Select your image and adjust the settings according to this screenshot:

ESP Flash Tool started from wine: adjust the settings accordingly
Now connect the NodeMCU module using USB and press the RST button while you keep pressing the FLASH button. This will put the module into the right state for flashing
Now click START in the flasher tool and wait until it is finished. Click RST again and have fun.

I hope that the esptool gets fixed quickly to work with the new hardware. I’m also not sure whether the problems comes from the USB-to-Serial converter or rather from the ESP-12E module. I suspect it is the later, but I couldn’t find anyone complaining about problems with the ESP-12E in general.

Shopping Links:

From SeeedStudio: http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/NodeMCU-v2-Lua-based-ESP8266-development-kit-p-2415.html
From AliExpress: Wireless module NodeMcu Lua Nodemcu WIFI Network Development Board Based ESP8266 FZ1390

ESP8266: NodeMCU Dev Kit Review

Daniel Eichhorn — Fri, 27 Feb 2015 12:08:00 +0000

Introduction

I was very excited when the very same group that developed the NodeMcu Lua firmware announced their ESP8266 Dev board. I ordered one from Banggood and yesterday it arrived after more than a month.

Quality

The PCB seems to be well done. The silk screen is yellow as opposed to the blue one the group posted on Github. Besides that they look identical. Solder points look also well done. An interesting point you can observe on the bottom side of the PCB: there is a gap which probably will increase Wifi sensitivity, since the PCB antenna is in this area.

The upper side of the NodeMCU Dev Kit with an ESP8266 ESP12 mounted

The bottom side of the Dev Kit. You can see the gap on the yellow PCB
which probably should improve Wifi sensitivity

Driver Installation

After the first inspection I wanted to attach it to my Mac running Yosemite (10.10). I then opened ESPlorer to see if it would find the Dev Kit but no luck there, the device just didn’t show up. I went back to the NodeMCU Github page and quickly found out, that they used a rather exotic CH340G as chip to connect the ESP8266 with the USB interface. It seems that this chip is a lot cheaper than the FT232R by FTDI that is usually used for a Serial-To-USB adaptor. I quickly found the driver page of the vendor but this was not directly supporting Yosemite. Ray on his esptoy page linked to these drivers:

Mac OS X: http://raysfiles.com/drivers/ch341ser_mac.zip
Windows XP: http://raysfiles.com/drivers/ch341ser.exe
Windows 7, 8, 8.1 and Linux: no drivers required

The Mac OS X driver has two folders. One for Yosemite and one for the rest. Installation worked like a charm since the drivers are also signed for Mac OS X. Otherwise you’d have to overwrite the security check in your System Settings (Security Tab).

After installation the Dev Kit showed up as

/dev/tty.Repleo-CH341-XXXX
/dev/cu.Repleo-CH341-XXXX

Strangely only the cu.Repleo device was found by ESPlorer but I could use it to connect with 9600 baud to the AT firmware. Then the next problem came…

Flashing New Firmware

There are two tiny buttons on the board: one labeled “User” and the other labeled “Flash”. I’m not sure yet what the User button does, but when pressed during power up the Flash button makes the device go into boot mode where it theoretically can receive new firmwares.
I say theoretically because it didn’t work at all at first. Everything I tried just caused the following error:

$ python esptool.py --port /dev/tty.Repleo-CH341-XXXX write_flash 0x00000 nodemcu_latest.bin 
Connecting...
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "esptool.py", line 471, in 
    esp.connect()
  File "esptool.py", line 149, in connect
    raise Exception('Failed to connect')
Exception: Failed to connect

After a while I gave up and used a normal serial-to-usb adapter to connect to the RX, TX and GND pins directly, without using the CH340G. For power supply I kept the ESP8266 Dev Kit connected to my Mac.
After another reset I could program the Dev Kit from ESPlorer and I have to say, it works like a charm. It’s great not skip a few wires just to connect to USB. With the Dev Kit power supply and serial connection is all in one beautiful USB wire.

Practical Use

The Dev Kit is very convenient because unlike some of the other ESP8266 modules it easily fits into a standard bread board. But there the beauty ends. As you can see on the picture the Dev Kit spans over all 10 pins of a normal bread board and covers them totally. To use them you’d have to use U-shaped bread board jumpers, but that means you have to remove the Dev Kit just to set them into the board. Not very convenient… Compared to that the ESP201 has on each side one pin row left..

The NodeMCU Dev Kit compared to the ESP8266 ESP201:
You can easily see that the Dev Kit covers all pins,
whereas the ESP201 has one row left

Summary

The NodeMCU Dev Kit is a useful development board that is easy to use and reduces the amount of external components that other ESP8266 modules require. That the Dev Kit covers a lot of holes on a standard 10 pin breadboard reduces the usefulness significantly, but you might prefer this problem over the free-floating wires that the ESP01 requires.

Please let me know if you find out how to flash the firmware without help of an external USB-to-Serial converter…

Quick-Links

The Node MCU DevKit board at Banggood
The Mac Drivers: http://raysfiles.com/drivers/ch341ser_mac.zip

NodeMCU Dev Kit – Squix – TechBlog