Based on the picture you posted you are not doing what @michaelahess is suggesting? Do not power up your H801 from the adapter while flashing. Unplug both the green terminal blocks and only power up the H801 from the 3.3v pin of the jumper cable coming from the FTDI. Right now you have power 12v on the green terminal blocks and that is a known issue when flashing.
I don’t know if that is your root issue but just some random thoughts. My tutorial video shows me flashing only using the FTDI set with jumper to 3.3v and using the FTDI VCC port powering the H801… no power adapter. When flashing is done, remove J3 jumper on H801 along with FTDI cables and plug in the two green terminal blocks back in
I have been unable to reproduce your problem with my spare H801
@dalec
I apologize if the picture caused any confusion. Even though i had the two 12v supply leads inserted into the green terminal blocks the adapter was not plugged in. That picture was more for general reference.
Here is a picture of my set up for how I’ve been executing the flashing process. Obviously my hands were occupied holding the camera for this picture however during my troubleshooting I’ve been keeping slight pressure on the four wires to the board. The flashing process was in flight while taking this picture.
Thanks,
It shouldn’t matter I guess but I don’t have anything plugged into the H801 other than the comm cabling when flashing.
How about a picture of the back of your FTDI? FYI: you can unplug those green terminal blocks instead of unscrewing the terminals. I use that feature a lot.
@dalec Thanks for the tip on the terminal blocks, very handy indeed. I re-flashed without the blocks attached, it was successful however same result- no red led and no SSID.
With Google Voice I can say “Set Kitchen Strip to red” and “Set Kitchen Strip to 10%”. I end up with red at 10%. I don’t currently have Alexa setup but I’m thinking it will probably work the same.
The SmartLighting SmartApp allows you to have a motion sensor, contact sensor, button, etc set the light strips to a color / level.
In my setup, I used M-F jumper wires. tried putting pressure on them in one direction, then another direction. Then after about 15-20 flashes, it finally worked, the LED’s came on at the end of the flash. Don’t know if the moon came into alignment, or the correct humidity level was reached, but it finally worked. Hope I don’t have this much trouble with the additional ones I plan on getting.
[quote=“LYU370, post:751, topic:51182, full:true”]
Then after about 15-20 flashes, it finally worked, the LED’s came on at the end of the flash. [/quote]
So the D1 led came on solid red and the D2 led came on as solid green immediately after the flash finished?
Correct, both LED’s lit up. The other flashes, that seemed like they worked but really didn’t, the green LED would briefly flash about a second after the flash finished.
IT FINALLY WORKED! I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw the red and green led’s light up full bright post flash. I would say that all in all, I probably pushed the firmware image to the device no less than 25 -30 times today alone; some errored out and some completed successfully (or so it seemed). I actually set it up with a small batch file that would run the flash process over and over with a short pause between the flashing runs so I could intervene and stop it should it actually succeed. I would say it was on or around the 10 or 11th flash iteration (25th or 26th time total) when it finally took---- I nearly fell off my chair.
Wow…I just can’t believe how finicky this thing is. But now I can finally progress to the next steps and get this thing controlling my lights!
Special thanks to everyone that helped me out, very much appreciated!!!
Glad to hear it, hope you enjoy playing with it now, and its easy to flash from the webpage from now on!!
Strongly suggest replacing your FTDI. If it worked eventually then it is all down to the signal quality reaching the H801 and the only thing controlling that is the FTDI. Dodgy capacitor/resistor/slight short circuit on the trace and it could easily cause dodgy signals, especially when sending lots of data (i.e. the firmware update step).
So the question is which FTDI adapter to get? I’m using the same one as whtzom6, which is the same one linked in post 128 by michaelahess, that is referenced in the first post. Maybe we got some from a bad batch?
I don’t know how to answer. If you see my tutorial post here you will see I have ordered one from Amazon and one from eBay. Take a close look at both FTDI and the one that was having trouble for @whtzom6 is the one like the one I got from eBay. The back of the printed circuit board has YP-05 and that has been giving him issues. The one I have that has been great has FTD123 printed on the back and I ordered here at Amazon here. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00IJXZQ7C/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
the HiLetgo FTDI on the left is from Amazon in both pictures. You can zoom in and see the silk screening on the Amazon version is of higher quality being sharper with higher detail. On the back of PCB it says FTDI232 on the Amazon one and YP-05 on eBay version. I am thinking the eBay is a clone of the Amazon version?
@whtzom6 Can you take a look at EXACTLY the Amazon link you ordered your FTDI from so we can caution others about potential problems.
FYI Buying from the same link on Amazon is easy to get something different, since the supplier is vitally important for this sort of thing. If you get the same device but from a different supplier then they may well have fakes or a dodgy batch
It’s just like @cjcharles says, it’s easy to get a different batch. Hey but at least now we can see those with the YP-05 are having issues! I think that supplier may not realize he has been distributing fakes?
There are still fake ftdi devices around that will get the drivers that do not work properly. Last one I had was getting “counterfeit device” put into the serial stream which messed things up.
If you really want a ftdi, then adafruit have one that will be legit. Otherwise just get a ch340 based adapter, install the drivers yourself and have no dramas at all.
