ESP8285 custom board no Wifi on wakeup

[skywave]

Hi There,

I have made a custom board based on ESP8285. I have made a small program that scans for APs nearby (taken from your examples), however no APs are found. The ESP8285 is only drawing 40mA from the power source. Is it possible that the radio is off. No errors appear when calling the scan function. The SDK is 2.1.0 with the default esp_init_data_default.bin. Bootloader v1.7. In the previous version I made a custom board with ESP8266 - the power drawn from the power source was 80mA. What can be happening? Is there a way to enable the radio interface?

Looking forward to hearing from you soon,

Pedro Pereira

[pratik]

Interesting. You are correct on the power consumption of about 70mA with previous SDKs.
If you flash the previous SDK based code now, does it work okay? Or is this like a permanent problem since you started using the new SDK?

Also, when you flash the new SDK based program, flash the whole set of files included in that SDK - the boot file, user1/2, init, and blank files as well.

[skywave]

Is there a way to check if RF is on or not? wifi_set_sleep_type function doesn't seem to influence. Consumption is still 40mA - radio functions return true (OK) but no APs found / no SoftAP detected - seems like the rf is off.

[pratik]

RF must be on if the functions are working fine. Otherwise they will return errors. Try flashing the AT firmware at check everything is alright?
Also, you said it is a custom board. Make sure your antenna design is correct!

[skywave]

Hi There,

Thanks for the reply. I have flashed the AT firmware. Same result. Consumption is around 40mA, all AT commands work, including changing modes (station, AP, SoftAP+station). No Aps found - i cannot detect SoftAP. System returns MAC addresses, chip ID and everything else. Besides radio all other things work. The chips were bought from TME. Is this an authorized distributor? Or could the chips be damaged somehow.

Best Regards,

[pratik]

This really should not be happening. The chip is fine I guess, ESD or other damages will usually affect the digital section too, so no way it is just the RF.
What you have here seems like an RF circuit design issue to me. It might have something to do with board layout or maybe you have shorts under the chip RF pins or something? You mentioned that this is a custom board... so I am considering possibilities of design issues and soldering issues.