Possibly the electronic component that has my attention the most at the moment is the ESP8266 microchip, let’s review the features that make it so interesting and make a summary of how we can use it.
The ESP8266 is a low cost Wi-Fi 32-bit microchip with full microcontroller capabilities and full TCP/IP protocol stack .
There are differences between models and manufacturers, although, if it has its factory firmware loaded, we can communicate with it with a third microcontroller using AT command set (Hayes command set); or we can load custom code to be executed by the microcontroller.
The first thing we need to be able to work with the module is to include the microchip support in the Arduino IDE to be able to easily load code:
En Arduino IDE
File> Preferences > Additional Boards Manager URLs > http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json
Tools > Board > Boards Manager buscar ESP8266 instalar ESP8266 by ESP8266 Community. After selecting the correct port and card we can open some example scripts for ESP modules.
- INSTALLING PERSONALIZED CODE.
If the ESP microchip that we are going to flash is contained in a card that integrates the USB connection (NodeMCU and Wemos Mega + ESP) we can connect directly, select the card and load the code; but if we are using an S-01 module we need a bridge to connect it to the computer, either a USB module or an Arduino board connected according to the following scheme:
TX (Arduino) - TX (ESP)
RX (Arduino) - RX (ESP)
GND (Arduino) - RST (ESP) // disconnect when flashing
GND (Arduino) - GP0 (ESP) // remove to run module
GND (Arduino) - GND (ESP)
3.3v (Arduino) - VCC (ESP)
3.3v (Arduino) - CHPD(ESP)
RST (Arduino) - GND (Arduino) // by-pass Arduino2. INSTALL FACTORY FIRMWARE (AT COMMANDS)
We download the application to flash
https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-flasher
How to know which Firmware and which ESP8266 model we are using
How to Change Firmware and Install Custom Code
How to connect the module to an external microcontroller
http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json
http://products.espressif.com:8000/
https://www.espressif.com/en/products/modules/esp8266
https://docs.espressif.com/projects/esp-at/en/latest/AT_Binary_Lists/ESP8266_AT_binaries.html