The third and final board I got the other day ... is a project that I tried to home etch a couple of times but for some reason, it never worked right. So I finally ordered the fabricated version and it works perfectly.
If you've ever tried to program an ESP-01 Arduino Wifi board, then you know what a pain in the ass it is because you have to manually reset for each upload then reset again to gain access to it ... well with this setup, you can program it just like any other Arduino. The small-cap gets hit with the DTR pin and it puts the ESP-01 into the right mode to accept the program then when the program is uploaded, it resets the board and you can communicate with it via the serial to USB adapter.
This instructable inspired this project ... the details of how it works are there if you're interested.
Pics ...
If you've ever tried to program an ESP-01 Arduino Wifi board, then you know what a pain in the ass it is because you have to manually reset for each upload then reset again to gain access to it ... well with this setup, you can program it just like any other Arduino. The small-cap gets hit with the DTR pin and it puts the ESP-01 into the right mode to accept the program then when the program is uploaded, it resets the board and you can communicate with it via the serial to USB adapter.
This instructable inspired this project ... the details of how it works are there if you're interested.
Pics ...