After a day worth of document reading, hacking and debugging code I can now read/set the fuse bits and also flash and dump the code memory of the PIC. This with the PIC hex code hardcoded into a string array in the esppic software.

Even if I could flash and read back the code successfully my PIC test firmware did't work - the pic looked completely dead. I spend an hour debugging the esp code and focused on the fuse/config settings, but no joy. Then I realised that my pic test code was broken. I didn't use the LAT register for toggling the port for the flashing LED. Doh! I'm really too experienced to spend that long time on a beginners mistake like that. ^__^

So now I basically just have to patch in the webserver code so code can be uploaded over wifi instead of being hardcoded. Ans also make the code support more than just the 16F1705 of course.

I put the codes up at my github - https://github.com/SmallRoomLabs/esppic