ESP8266 on White Aliexpress Break-Out Board

Tue Dec 20, 2016

Recently I’ve bought a couple of those super cheap ESP8266-12E devices and the proper white break-out boards.

After soldering the ESP8266 on top of the break-board I ran a few tests and tried to get this little IoT device up and running, but I wasn’t able to do so.

It took me quite a while to figure out that the VCC pin of the break-board wasn’t connected to the VCC pin going to the ESP8266 board. Becuase of the lack of documentation there was no clue that either one has to add a voltage divider or a jumper. Doing the latter fixed the issue and I was able to get the ESP8266 running.

To flash the ESP8266-12E connect GND, VCC, RXD, TXD and make sure GPIO0 and GPIO15 are tied to ground.