FDTI programmer

Q&A Forum › Category: ESP32 › FDTI programmer

Manuel Mário Correia de Almeida asked 8 months ago

I have a AI Thinker ESP32-CAM and a ESP32 Dev Module with damaged usb plug, So both need the FDTI programmer. When I use Visual Studio Code with the damaged ESP32 Dev Module, I can transfer the Blink-LED program but after that, the led doesn’t blink. But when I transfer again the program the led blinks during the transferring. When the transfer finishes the led doesn’t blink any more.

8 Answers

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Manuel Mário Correia de Almeida answered 8 months ago

Sorry. I tried again and if I press the EN button, the LED blinks.

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Manuel Mário Correia de Almeida answered 8 months ago

Now I found that the problem is with the Serial Monitor. When I open it, the led stops blinking and the Serial Monitor doesn’t show the LED state. If I close the Serial Monitor, the LED starts blinking again. And the EN button has no effect.

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Sara Santos Staff answered 8 months ago

Hi.
That’s weird. So that seems to be a problem related to your specific board.
Usually, you just need to press the EN button so that the board starts running the program.
Regards,
Sara

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Manuel Mário Correia de Almeida answered 8 months ago

There are many questions like mine in the web. In one of them I found:
“Yes, I have just found the trouble, just put Off DTR & RTS in the settings of the serial monitor.”
So I put:
monitor_rts = 0
monitor_dtr = 0
in platformio.ini and then the Serial monitor of Visual Studio Code started running.

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Sara Santos Staff answered 8 months ago

Hi again.
I didn’t know about those settings.
Is everything working as expected now?
Regards,
Sara

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Steve Mercer answered 8 months ago

RTS (Request To Send) and DTR (Data Terminal Ready) were signals used for RS232 communication years ago. Computers were slow and so were modems so you had to send a hardware signal when you wanted to send data and when the receiver was ready to receive. In this day and age computers are many times faster than any serial signal can go so these lines are no longer needed.

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Manuel Mário Correia de Almeida answered 8 months ago

Now it is working well and I can follow your eBook. Only after putting those settings in platformio.ini I was able to connect esp32 with Visual Studio Code by Serial Monitor.

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Sara Santos Staff answered 8 months ago

Thanks for sharing your knowledge, Steve.
Manuel, since you can follow the projects now, I’ll close this issue.
If you need further help, you just need to open a new question in our forum.
Regards,
Sara