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What is ESP8266
The ESP8266 is a low-cost Wi-Fi microchip with a full TCP/IP stack and microcontroller capability produced by Espressif Systems in Shanghai, China.
The chip first came to the attention of Western makers in August 2014 with the ESP-01 module, made by a third-party manufacturer Ai-Thinker. This small module allows microcontrollers to connect to a Wi-Fi network and make simple TCP/IP connections.
However, at first, there was almost no English-language documentation on the chip and the commands it accepted. The very low price and the fact that there were very few external components on the module, which suggested that it could eventually be very inexpensive in volume, attracted many hackers to explore the module, the chip, and the software on it, as well as to translate the Chinese documentation.
The ESP8285 is an ESP8266 with 1 MiB of built-in flash, allowing the building of single-chip devices capable of connecting to Wi-Fi.
These microcontroller chips have been succeeded by the ESP32 family of devices, including the pin-compatible ESP32-C3.
Features
- Processor: L106 32-bit RISC microprocessor core based on the Tensilica Xtensa Diamond Standard 106Micro running at 80 MHz
- Memory:
- 32 KiB instruction RAM
- 32 KiB instruction cache RAM
- 80 KiB user-data RAM
- 16 KiB ETS system-data RAM
- External QSPI flash: up to 16 MiB is supported (512 KiB to 4 MiB typically included)
- IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
- Integrated TR switch, balun, LNA, power amplifier and matching network
- WEP or WPA/WPA2 authentication, or open networks
- 17 GPIO pins
- SPI
- I²C (software implementation)
- I²S interfaces with DMA (sharing pins with GPIO)
- UART on dedicated pins, plus a transmit-only UART can be enabled on GPIO2
- 10-bit ADC (successive approximation ADC)
SDKs
In October 2014, Espressif Systems released a software development kit (SDK) for programming the chip directly, which removed the need for a separate microcontroller. Since then, there have been many official SDK releases from Espressif.
An alternative to Espressif’s official SDK is the open-source ESP-Open-SDK that is based on the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) toolchain, maintained by Max Filippov. Another alternative is the “Unofficial Development Kit” by Mikhail Grigorev.
Other main SDKs, mostly open-source, include:
- Arduino – A C++-based firmware. With this core, the ESP8266 CPU and its Wi-Fi components can be programmed like any other Arduino device.
- ESP8266 BASIC – An open-source BASIC-like interpreter specifically tailored for the Internet of Things (IoT). Self-hosting browser-based development environment.
- ESP Easy – Developed by home automation enthusiasts.
- ESPHome – ESPHome is a system to control your ESP8266/ESP32 by simple yet powerful configuration files and control them remotely through home automation systems.
- ESP-Open-SDK – Free and open (as much as possible) integrated SDK for ESP8266/ESP8285 chips.
- ESPurna – Open-source ESP8285/ESP8266 firmware.
- MicroPython – A port of MicroPython (an implementation of Python for embedded devices) to the ESP8266 platform.
- Moddable SDK – includes JavaScript language and library support for the ESP8266
- NodeMCU – A Lua-based firmware.
- Tasmota – Open-source firmware, very popular with home automation enthusiasts.
- Zerynth – IoT framework for programming ESP8266 and other microcontrollers in Python.
Espressif Modules
This is the series of ESP8266-based modules made by Espressif:
The complete range and the latest products can be found here.
Ai-Thinker Modules
This is the first series of modules made with the ESP8266 by the third-party manufacturer Ai-Thinker and remains the most widely available. They are collectively referred to as “ESP-xx modules”. To form a workable development system they require additional components, especially a serial TTL-to-USB adapter (sometimes called a USB-to-UART bridge) and an external 3.3 volt power supply. Novice ESP8266 developers are encouraged to consider larger ESP8266 Wi-Fi development boards like the NodeMCU which includes the USB-to-UART bridge and a Micro-USB connector coupled with a 3.3 volt power regulator already built into the board. When project development is complete, those components are not needed and these cheaper ESP-xx modules are a lower power, smaller footprint option for production runs.
Please visit http://www.ai-thinker.com/ to see all the product ranges, features and much more.
ESP32-C3
In 2020, Espressif announced a new chip ESP32-C3, which is pin-compatible with ESP8266. It is based on a single core RISC-V 32-bit CPU with a clock speed of up to 160 MHz. It includes 400 kB of SRAM and 384 kB ROM storage space built in.
ESP8266 – AI THINKER – MicroPython SDK – Made Easy
Call to Action For You
I hope you enjoyed today’s learnings. Get ready for an exciting journey as we dive deeper into the world of ESP8266 and its projects. We will begin with NodeMCU – ESP8266 and explore a wide range of useful projects that you must try.
If you have specific project ideas in mind, please let me know in the comment section. I’ll happily explain everything in a detailed step-by-step method, providing you with all the necessary codes.
Stay tuned for a thrilling learning experience ahead!
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Enjoy the below useful project. Soon, we’ll explore this in detail, and I’ll provide you all the codes and step-by-step guides.
