Getting Started With Esp8266

Let’s learn the basics of Esp8266

The Chip

ESP8266 (presently ESP8266EX) is a chip with which manufacturers are making wirelessly networkable micro-controller modules.

More specifically, ESP8266 is a system-on-a-chip (SoC) with capabilities for 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n, supporting WPA/WPA2), general-purpose input/output (16 GPIO), Inter-Integrated Circuit (I²C), analog-to-digital conversion (10-bit ADC), Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), I²S interfaces with DMA (sharing pins with GPIO), UART (on dedicated pins, plus a transmit-only UART can be enabled on GPIO2), and pulse-width modulation (PWM). It employs a 32-bit RISC CPU based on the Tensilica Xtensa LX106 running at 80 MHz (or overclocked to 160 MHz).

It has a 64 KB boot ROM, 64 KB instruction RAM and 96 KB data RAM. External flash memory can be accessed through SPI.

The Modules

Various vendors have consequently created a multitude of modules containing the ESP8266 chip at their cores. Some of these modules have specific identifiers, including monikers such as "Wi07c" and "ESP-01" through "ESP-13"; while other modules might be ill-labeled and merely referred to by a general description — e.g., "ESP8266 Wireless Transceiver."

ESP8266-based modules have demonstrated themselves as a capable, low-cost, networkable foundation for facilitating end-point IoT developments. Espressif's official module is presently the ESP-WROOM-02. The AI-Thinker modules are succinctly labeled ESP-01 through ESP-13.

NodeMCU boards extend upon the AI-Thinker modules. Olimex, Adafruit, Sparkfun, WeMos, ESPert (ESPresso) all make various modules as well.