Hey all - Sorry I haven't moved forward with the project. Got another stuck in my craw, with the ESP8266.

I have a question for you fine folks - I was wondering about the possibility that my problem with communicating isn't with my board layout, but rather with the connection. I believe i mentioned in a previous post that I have stuck some pogo pins in the end of the female connector on the ribbon cable from the CCDebugger, and it has recently occurred to me that my failure point may be the point - of the pogo pins. They are a spear tip design (this product) with a tiny point. The picture at the link doesn't do them justice, you have to visualize the dimensions shown. That single point of contact is tiny. Easily smaller than any of the trace widths on the board, possibly even smaller than the pads on the IC's.

Could I have a power choke at that connection? I may kludge on some sort of header and try to fire it up again before de-soldering everything.

Thanks for any input!