You should try a lower Baudrate. The reason you ESP is only responding to that value is because it’s programmed that way.
If you hook up the ESP to a serial convertor on your PC you can set the Baud rate to a lower value with an AT command. Depending on the when it was made there are, I believe, two commands to do that.
That is definitely where I would start. That should work really stable. If you need more speed you can always go up, but I don’t think that’s really needed for this kind of construction. Everything in my house works fine with 9600
I’m not sure what that problem could be, but it may have to do with the firmware version. I think @vshymanskyy can recommend a good firmware, I’m not sure what I’m running (besides, I’m running the ESP-01 which is notoriously unstable anyway).
All new modules ESP-01 I have had the same problem. To communicate with
ESP I used hard serial of UNO and libraries ESP8266_HardSer.h
BlynkSimpleShieldEsp8266_HardSer.h with 115k speed
I the problem solved by setting the pre-configuration of the ESP program by “ESP8266 Config.exe.”
I set operating mode = STA and put a name and password for the network to connect ESP.
From that moment all ESP work properly in projects.
There have been many, many, varying solutions to that error that depend on your exact situation with your hardware.
Please search this forum for the words “failed to disable echo” and try all the solutions shown on SOLVED topics. If you still have issues then please create a NEW topic of your own, showing all the details like hardware type, firmware versions error messages and solutions tried.