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Assembling the Board Pt 3: Finding ESP8266 tips you have to hunt really hard for.

A project log for BodiHub

A Wearable, "Smart", Internet of Things Development Board That Learns

casual-cyborgCasual Cyborg 04/05/2018 at 17:550 Comments

It's alive! It took me a while to find out that any ESP8266 you work with, has to have at least 300mA in juice. And that 3.3V power supply coming off of your USB to UART that you're using to communicate and power your ESP8266? Ain't gonna cut it. Most USB to UARTS have at most 18.5 mA. It wasn't until I soldered on the 3.3V regulator which has a minimum of 600mA that the board started working properly.

Before that, I was getting all kinds of weird reboot errors, strange memory address registers on the serial terminal, and strange blinking lights off the board itself. It was weird too. I could upload and flash the memory, and I'd get hardware puke in return. After many, many hours looking it up in forums, blog sites, and... goddamn, I think I'm also going to write an FAQ on the ESP8266 to save other people this kind of headache. Anyway, after all that, it was this one forum post in sticksville internet, that some dude said he never runs the ESP8266 without some kind of external power source that IS NOT from the USB to UART.

That's when I had that "Ah, F--K ME!" moment.

Now? It runs smooth as butter! Check it out!

This is the board with the typical blinky light "hello world!" program.

And this is the board talking to the web via WiFi! Up next! More hardware revisions, cost cutting, do you really need that on the board, and some concept photography! Because I always need an excuse to put on a lycra jumpsuit. OK, OK, it's to demo how we're going to mount the bodihub onto the body, where the sensor channels are, and what this thing can do. Plus, hey, it's always fun to feel like you're a high tech superhero from a comic book...


HADOUKEN!


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