ESP8266 Resources

Posted by: Dave Vandenbout 5 years, 9 months ago

(1 comment)

I received two ESP8266 Wifi modules in the mail yesterday. They cost a grand total of $10 and promise to make wireless interconnectivity cheap and easy with a simple serial interface. These guys got connectivity to a run-of-the-mill Wifi router at 366 meters using only the ESP8266's PCB antenna, so the performance looks good.

My plan is to connect them to a XuLA2 FPGA board running the ZPUino processor. Since the ZPUino is programmed through an Arduino IDE, I hope to be able to borrow a bunch of existing code to do my tests.

But before I can borrow code, I have to find it. So here is my current list of links for the ESP8266:

• http://espressif.com/en/products/esp8266/ : Espressif is the manufacturer of the ESP8266. Their site is pretty much a bunch of marketing hoo-hah and you'll have to "contact" them for more information. Not too useful.

• https://nurdspace.nl/ESP8266 : This is the homepage for a lot of ESP8266 information.

  • https://nurdspace.nl/images/e/e0/ESP8266_Specifications_English.pdf : ESP8266 specifications.
  • https://nurdspace.nl/File:ESP8266_Specifications_English.pdf : A datasheet! In English!.

• Electrodragon was one of the earlier companies to distribute ESP8266 modules. This is some documentation for their module which looks very similar to the ones I received.

  • http://www.electrodragon.com/w/Wi07c : Wiki page with multiple sets of information and links for using the ESP8266.
  • http://blog.electrodragon.com/cloud-updating-your-wi07c-esp8266-now/ : Shows how to update the ESP8266 firmware.
  • http://blog.electrodragon.com/esp8266-gpio-test-edited-firmware/ : A demo of turning the LEDs on the ESP8266 board on/off over the Wifi link.

• http://tech.scargill.net : Peter Scargill has been pretty thorough in documenting his experiences in getting the ESP8266 up and running and delving into some of the capabilities of the chip.

  • http://tech.scargill.net/2014/09/25/esp8266-wifi-modulecheap-wifi/
  • http://tech.scargill.net/2014/09/27/investigating-the-esp8266-serial-killing/
  • http://tech.scargill.net/2014/10/05/esp8266-working/
  • http://tech.scargill.net/2014/10/08/esp8266-as-an-access-point/

• https://www.zybuluo.com/kfihihc/note/31135: This is the earliest design example I have found. It uses the ESP8266 WiFi module to grab a static page from the internet.

• http://rayshobby.net/?p=9734 : This is another early, complete design example. (This site seems to be up and down, so keep checking if you can't get to it.)

• http://hackaday.io/project/3072/instructions : This is another complete example that uses the ESP8266 to provide the internet link for a simple web browser hosted on an Arduino.

• http://www.esp8266.com/ : This is a community forum centered around the ESP8266. Everything is here, but probably best to read this stuff after going through a complete design example.

• This is a list of all the Github repositories I could find with ESP8266 code.

  • https://github.com/esp8266 : Repo for the ESP8266 community forum.
  • https://github.com/bafeigum/ESP8266-Library : Looks like an Arduino continuously polls the ESP8266 and prints a list of any Wifi access points it finds. I didn't think too much of this app at first until I looked at some of the others.
  • https://github.com/imjosh/espBasicExample : This might be an actual, working example of using the ESP8266 with an Arduino. Worth a look.
  • https://github.com/scottjgibson/esp8266 : I'm not really sure what this is, but there's a lot of it.
  • https://github.com/534659123/OCROBOT-WIFI-ESP8266-arduino-library : This seems to be some test code for another type of ESP8266 board with a 6-pin connector. I'll pass.
  • https://github.com/aabella/ESP8266-Arduino-library : Looks like a project stub. Not complete.
  • https://github.com/giannoug/ESP8266 : Another "work-in-progress" project (by the author's own admission). Not complete.

• Here's a list of all the ESP8266 tutorials I've made using the information provided from the above sources. Hopefully I've accurately distilled their knowledge into a concentrated elixir that will answer your questions on certain, specific topics:

  • Talking to an ESP8266 module using an FTDI USB-to-serial cable.
  • Using the ESP8266 in concert with an Arduino-like processor to access a webpage.
  • Upgrading the firmware in the flash of an ESP8266 module.

• ← Building the ZPUino
• ESP8266 Is Alive! →