ESP8266 Constantly Restarting

Question

I have been struggling for some time now trying to get my ESP8266 ESP-12 to work. I was able to get it loaded with the NodeMCU software. Now, the board constantly restarts itself. Whether I have a script loaded on it or not, the module seems to continually restart. I am using ESPlorer, and can see it get connection to NodeMCU. Then the board restarts several seconds to several mins later. I have tried various pinout, capacitors, etc. with no luck in solving this problem. I have been searching all over and have had no luck finding a solution. Any help is greatly appreciated. Here is my current pinout:

ESP-12          -----------      TTY 3.3v Serial
================================================
TX ----------------------------- RX    
RX ----------------------------- TX    
GND, GPIO15 -------------------- GND    
VCC, CH_PD, GPIO0, (RST) ------- LD1117v33 voltage regulator +3.3v    
GND, GPIO15 -------------------- LD1117v33 voltage regulator GND

Thanks so much in advance for any help!

Answer 1

Assuming the hardware is okay and the right binary is loaded it's almost surly a power problem.

1) Make sure what ever voltage regulator you're using is rated for 200mA or more. In your case the LD1117 can source 800mA so that's good.

2) Make sure you're upstream power supply can source 200mA or more. If you're powering from a USB hub make sure the hub is powered.

3) Make sure you have some large low ESR capacitors across GND and 3.3v. Two capacitors: 10uF and 100uF worked for me (there's nothing magic about these exact values, 10-100uF should work). The ESP8266 can draw huge (relatively) amounts of current for short periods while booting or transmitting. This can cause a bad transient on the power supply, which will cause the system to reboot, which can lead to an infinite reboot cycle.