After much fiddling around I managed to connect to it. However it is unreliable. This thing is a big disapointment. It is obvious a lot of work went into this thing, but they should have put in a little more to get it to work right out of the box.

You can get Various Arduinos, ESP8266's and ESP32's for much less and they just work.

JimiT and ElectroMagnus, thank you for your help

Here is how I see it, I already spent over $40.00 for this thing. Yes, I can spend another $3.50 and order some caps, wait 5 to 6 weeks for them to arrive and they may or may not solve the problem. If this is a known issue you should have included a cap with the device.

I tried 3 caps, 2 electrolitica and a polyester one. the result is the same, you need to try to upload the sketch multiple times to maybe get it to work once.

try what? add a cap? what type and volts? where can I get 1 cap? how about I send this back and you fix it so it works?

After much fiddling around I managed to connect to it. However it is unreliable. This thing is a big disapointment. It is obvious a lot of work went into this thing, but they should have put in a little more to get it to work right out of the box.

You can get Various Arduinos, ESP8266's and ESP32's for much less and they just work.

I am using win7 and arduino ide 1.8.5. The board automatically selects the com port when plugged in . The port varies .
I have the cap soldered onto dupont leads and have them plugged all the way in. I tried both polarity's

I keep getting the "timed out waiting for packet header " error. for whatever reason it won't connect. I have no problems with the ports with various Arduino boards, ESP8266's and ESP32's

I tried reversing the cap, It still won't connect. It still has the same timeout problem. Changing baud rate doesn't help either.

I tried the cap, here is a screen shot of whats the problem. The pc is seeing the port, it recognises the driver and is working.
It is trying to upload, but times out I tried both baud rates neither works.

I updated the Arduino IDE to 1.8.5 Installed the usb drivers, it still doesn'y work. When the M5 is plugged in it shows up in the device manager and the port is working correctly. so I know the usb port is good. I also tried lowering the transfer sped as suggested and that doesn't help. I will try to find a capacitor some where. It is kind of disappointing that with all the work that went into this it has problems connecting.

I am getting errors when trying to up load, it sees the board but gives he following errors:
Arduino: 1.8.1 (Windows 7), Board: "M5Stack-Core-ESP32, QIO, 80MHz, 115200, None"

Sketch uses 351999 bytes (26%) of program storage space. Maximum is 1310720 bytes.
Global variables use 12024 bytes (4%) of dynamic memory, leaving 282888 bytes for local variables. Maximum is 294912 bytes.
esptool.py v2.1
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "esptool.py", line 2524, in <module>
File "esptool.py", line 2517, in main
File "esptool.py", line 2246, in main
File "esptool.py", line 177, in init
File "site-packages\serial_init.py", line 88, in serial_for_url
File "site-packages\serial\serialwin32.py", line 62, in open
serial.serialutil.SerialException: could not open port 'COM6': WindowsError(23, 'Data error (cyclic redundancy check).')
Failed to execute script esptool
the selected serial port Failed to execute script esptool
does not exist or your board is not connected

This report would have more information with
"Show verbose output during compilation"
option enabled in File -> Preferences.