SparkFun Forums

[marcmerlin]

First, I did want to say thank you for the documentation on
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/es ... okup-guide
and
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/es ... e-overview

but it was generally confusing that there are 2 identical looking boards (yes, not quite, but close) and not have any info on how they differ.
Worst, I spent stupid amounts of time trying to see why my ESP8266 (non dev) would not flash and why I wasn't getting a ttyUSB0 when I plug in its USB. It kind of sucks to a have a USB connector that doesn't do serial on this day and age, it should likely have a warning on it "not for flashing".
Yes, I have an old school ftdi adapter for very old 328p boards like arduiny, I'll be using that, but it was disappointing.

Can I beg/make suggestions?
1) both URLs above should have a big warning "do you have the right board, or the other one from <insert other link>".
2) the non dev board should have an early warning at the top "you cannot flash via USB, use FTDI adapter, see below"
3) there should be a link on the product pages for both products as well as both learn pages that brings you to a page showing all the differences between the 2 products and why I would buy/use one of the other (worse, given that they are the same price, it means that both are lacking something the other board has, you can't just buy the dev board and think you're good).

thanks, all 3 above would have saved me lots of time and frustration, and generally if someone could answer #3 here, even partially, that would rock

Thanks

[marcmerlin]

So is there really no page or list of differences between ESP8266 dev vs no dev?

[n1ist]

The description for the non-dev version says
"A 3.3V FTDI Basic is required to program the SparkFun ESP8266 Thing" and the schematic clearly shows that the micro-usb connector is only used for power.