ESP8266 – little board, lotta Wi-Fi

Lots going on with the intriguing ESP8266 board. Coming out of China with no english documentation, this tiny board has the brains to run Lua and connect to WiFi, manage some GPIO and all it takes is… a lot of fiddling. As time has gone But for $2 on ebay, you can get hacking the firmware, flashing exisitng firmwarefrom Windows like nodemcu (thats the one with the lua) or just have fun running it as a serial controlled Wi-Fi adapter.

Folks have been learning what the card needs and is capable of like working with MQTT and relays and attaching OLED displays. The smallest version of the board has two GPIO pins, so it’s a bit tricky to think up what you can do with them, but there are bigger versions out there with more GPIO pins and, one assumes, more capabilities.

So, if you wanted to start playing with an ES8266? Well, you could just get a board and start with that; there’s plenty of reference material in the links in this article or look at this instructable on using the board. Or if you want to see what it’s like without mastering supplying a 3.3V rail, then check out the ESPtoy from RaysHobby.net which is a custom 3.3V Arduino with light sensor, temp sensor and RGB LED into which you can plug an ESP8266 and get hacking. There’s oodles of neatness about that board… why yes, I did just order one.

And an unrelated aside – Debian 7.8.8: If you’ve kept your Debian Wheezy up to date, you don’t need this, but if you have your own Debian install media you’ll want to know there’s a Debian 7.8.8 update that will freshed your flash drives and dolly up your DVDs.