[GreenKeys] ESP8266 WiFi Module UART

[Ralph Mowery]

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <epvgk at limpoc.com>
To: <N4TTY at ARRL.NET>
Cc: <nagle at animats.com>; <greenkeys at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Sunday, December 27, 2015 2:17 PM
Subject: Re: [GreenKeys] ESP8266 WiFi Module UART


> On Sun, Dec 27, 2015 at 01:23:55PM -0500, Steve Garrison wrote:
>>
>> Have you ordered one or more of these and found them easy to use?  What
>> about import duties?  Do the actually apply or can that statement on 
>> their
>> website be ignored?
>>
>> Steve G./N4TTY
>
> I ordered a number of those 99c CP2102 boards and the ones I received did 
> not
> work at 45.45 baud. The programming utility reported success programming 
> them,
> but the programmed settings were ignored.  Certainly all of these are 
> counterfeit
> chips, and it probably depends on how thorough the forgery is for the 
> particular
> run of chips you get. They're so cheap it's probably worth buying a few 
> just
> to try your luck.
>
> I actually considered lifting off the fake chip and soldering a real 
> CP2102 from
> digikey in place of it, because the board is nice and small and cheap, but 
> I haven't
> tried it yet.
>

There are a lot of very inexpensive items comming in from China.  I have 
ordered many things from China off ebay that is very inexpensive.  Not much 
more than the postage should be.  There does not seem to by any inport 
duties.  Usually takes 2 to 3 weeks which I don't think is bad from China.

I bet most of the chips are forged and may not work exectally the same. 
Seems lots of them are for converting the USB port to TTL or rs232  and 
there is a driver issue with them ..  Instead of the newest drivers you need 
to look for some older ones that do not check to see exectally what chip is 
in the dongle.

As all of this is just for a hobby work most of it works very well , 
espcially if you don't push them to the maximum