ESP8266

From CoMakingSpace Wiki

File:NodeMCU-Board.jpg
Typical NodeMCU development board, carrying an ESP8266-12E chip in addition to a voltage regulator and an USB/UART bridge for easy programming

ESP8266 was initially intended as a serial port to wifi bridge, but can also be used as standalone microcontroller. There is even support for Arduino IDE.

Development Boards

In order to get used to the ESP8266, it is a good idea to get a development board. These boards contain a pre-soldered ESP8266, access to the GPIO pins and usually a USB connector which can be used to communicate with the ESP8266 and supply it with power.

Wemos D1 Mini

The Wemos D1 mini is a low-cost microcontroller PCB featuring an ESP8266.

It uses a CH340 USB serial converter.

Bootup GPIO state

D0 D1 D2 D3 D4 D5 D6 D7 D8 A0 RX TX
LOW LOW LOW HIGH HIGH LOW LOW LOW LOW LOW HIGH HIGH

Firmware Options

Development Tools

  • ESPlorer integrated development environment mostly useful for AT, Lua and MicroPython development
  • Arduino integrated development environment
  • ESPtool Python package
  • PlatformIO

Advanced Hacking

If you just need a superfast cheap microcontroller without wifi, check out nodsk8266.

Links