Testing of the boards looked to be going well until the stage of flashing the firmware was attempted when, in spite of careful attention to the state of the input pins of the ESP8266 device, it was relactant to enter 'boot mode' on application -of power. As is often the case with such problems the cause was not simplistic but a combination of design errors compounded by a faulty (fake) chip in the external FTDI USB to TTL converter being used to load the firmware.

Fortunately only component value changes are necessary on the board itself to correct the design shortcomings and the firmware has now been successfully loaded and testing can proceed. Now that the initial loading of firmware has been achieved it is hoped that future changes can be covered by Over the Air (OTA) capability that facilitates changing and uploading the code 'wirelessly '.