I recently purchased this board (my first purchase on tindie) to simplify programming an esp8266-01 WiFi board using Arduino IDE/sketch. The board connects between my FTDI and esp8266-01, to facilitate programming (see image). The board on the left is the FTDI serial interface card that connects via USB to my computer, which is running my Arduino IDE. The board in the middle is the this blkbox development board, with selected pins soldered to header pins, to facilitate testing. The board on the right is the esp8266-01.
One detail that is not described well on this item's tindie description is the precise use of the pushbutton. Experimentally, I discovered that the pushbutton has to be held down while clicking on the "Upload" button in the Arduino IDE, then released as soon as the first (of two) set of dots appear in the status window in the Arduino IDE. These dots appear after compiling the sketch and uploading it to your esp8266. I release the button as soon as the status line reports "Done uploading." and I see the dots (periods) begin appearing in the area below the status line in the Arduino IDE.
I soldered the FTDI board to the blkbox dev board to minimize poor connections with jumper wires. I also soldered some header pins to the connectors along the top/bottom of the blkbox board, to help with testing.
My initial test sketch was Blink (comes packaged with Arduino IDE), modified to use pin 1/GPIO1 (instead of pin 13) LED on-board the esp8266
What I have discovered is that after programming the esp8266, disconnect the USB cable from the FTDI, and then apply power to the blkbox board (and esp8266) with an external 5VDC power supply using the "5V" pin only. Using the VR pin (with either 5VDC or 3.3VDC) did not work for me. Nor did connecting the "3V" pin to a 3.3VDC external power supply. After power-up, the esp8266 blue LED just blinked away, happy as a clam!
Obviously, this doesn't test any of the WiFi functionality on the esp8266, and one initial test using the WiFiWebServer example sketch included with the Arduino IDE (modified for my network credentials) works only while the FTDI device is powering the esp8266 (via blkbox). When disconnecting from the PC and powering externally, the WiFiWebServer sketch stops working. I have also disconnected my esp8266 completely from the blkbox device (and the FTDI) by powering the esp separately from my external power source, to no avail. I *may* have a damaged esp8266 module, after trying a multitude of experiments, so my next move is to use a different esp8266 to see if my results change for the better.
Prior to getting this board, BTW, I was using a rather Rube Goldberg contraption involving various combinations of ESPlorer, lualoader, NodeMCU, Arduino IDE, external power supplies, putty, CoolTerm, Termite, and other components! Needless to say, this arrangement was sub-optimal and left too much to chance. As a result, I had many challenges getting even a simple program loaded onto my esp8266.
So, I am happy to have this blkbox device, as it does simplify my esp8266 programming task considerably.
I recommend this board to anyone trying to program their esp8266-01.
