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A Beginner's Guide To The ESP8266 16

This document is a beginner's guide to using the ESP8266 WiFi microcontroller board. It will cover what the ESP8266 is, different board options, installing software and setting up hardware. It will then teach networking protocols and show how to set up a WiFi connection. The guide demonstrates how to set up a web server, upload programs over WiFi, control RGB lighting wirelessly, get time synchronization, monitor sensors, and get email notifications. Basic microcontroller knowledge is recommended before working through this in-depth tutorial.

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riccav77
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175 views4 pages

A Beginner's Guide To The ESP8266 16

This document is a beginner's guide to using the ESP8266 WiFi microcontroller board. It will cover what the ESP8266 is, different board options, installing software and setting up hardware. It will then teach networking protocols and show how to set up a WiFi connection. The guide demonstrates how to set up a web server, upload programs over WiFi, control RGB lighting wirelessly, get time synchronization, monitor sensors, and get email notifications. Basic microcontroller knowledge is recommended before working through this in-depth tutorial.

Uploaded by

riccav77
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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A Beginner's

Guide to the
ESP8266
Pieter P, 08-03-2017

Some time ago, I wrote a Beginner's Guide to


Arduino that seems to be very popular, so I
decided to create a follow-up: A Beginner's
Guide to the ESP8266
ESP8266. That's right, a tutorial
on how to use the world's most popular $3 Wi-Fi
board.

This is going to be a very in-depth tutorial,


covering some networking concepts as well. If
you're a beginner, and just want to go straight to
the more exciting Wi-Fi part, feel free to do so, I
included short TL;DR's in the longer, more
technical parts.

A short overview of what I'll cover in this article:

1. What is an ESP8266? A short overview


of what an ESP8266 is, and what you can
do with it
2. Deciding on what board to buy buy: There's
loads of different ESP8266 available these
days, Vnding the one that's best for you
can be hard
3. Installing the software
software: you need to
install some software to program the
ESP8266, and maybe a USB driver
4. Setting up the hardware
hardware: some
modules and boards need some external
components
5. The ESP8266 as a microcontroller
microcontroller: the
ESP8266 can be used as a normal
microcontroller, just like an Arduino
6. Network protocols
protocols: Before we start
using the Wi-Fi capabilities of the
ESP8266, I'll teach you some of the
network protocols involved
7. Setting up a Wi-Fi connection
connection: That's
probably why you're reading this, right?
8. Name resolution
resolution: Find the ESP8266 on
your local network using mDNS
9. Setting up a simple web server server: This
enables you to add web pages to the
ESP8266, and browse them from your
computer or phone
10. Setting up an advanced web server server: a
more advanced server with a real Vle
system that allows you to upload new Vles
over Wi-Fi
11. OTA - uploading programs over Wi-Fi Wi-Fi:
You don't have to upload programs over
USB, you can use Wi-Fi instead
12. Wirelessly controlling your RGB
lighting
lighting: Change the color of your LED
strips using your phone or computer
13. Getting the timetime: Connect to a time
server using NTP and sync the ESP's clock
14. Monitoring sensors
sensors: log the temperature
in your living room, save it in `ash memory
and show it in a fancy graph in your
browser
15. Getting email notiVcations
notiVcations: Turn on a
notiVcation light when you've got unread
emails
16. Advanced features
features: use DNS, captive
portals, Wi-Fi connector libraries, OSC ...

This guide expects some basic knowledge of


microcontrollers like the Arduino. If that's
something you're not already familiar with, I'd
recommend you to read my Beginner's Guide to
Arduino Vrst, it covers a lot of the basics that I
won't go into in this article.
I really want to focus on the ESP8266-speciVc
things, like Wi-Fi and other network protocols,
the ESP's hardware, software, IoT, etc ...

What is an ESP8266?
The ESP8266 is a System on a Chip (SoC),
manufactured by the Chinese company
Espressif. It consists of a Tensilica L106 32-bit
micro controller unit (MCU) and a Wi-Fi
transceiver
transceiver. It has 11 GPIO pins
pins* (General
Purpose Input/Output pins), and an analog
input as well. This means that you can program
it like any normal Arduino or other
microcontroller. And on top of that, you get Wi-Fi
communication, so you can use it to connect to
your Wi-Fi network, connect to the Internet, host
a web server with real web pages, let your
smartphone connect to it, etc ... The possibilities
are endless! It's no wonder that this chip has
become the most popular IOT device available.

There are many different modules available,


standalone modules like the ESP-## series by AI
Thinker, or complete development boards like
the NodeMCU DevKit or the WeMos D1.
Different boards may have different pins broken
out, have different Wi-Fi antennas, or a different
amount of `ash memory on board.

(*) The ESP8266 chip itself has 17 GPIO pins, but 6 of these
pins (6-11) are used for communication with the on-board
`ash memory chip.

Programming

There are different ways to program the


ESP8266, but I'll only cover the method using the
Arduino IDE. This is really easy for beginners,
and it's a very familiar environment if you've
used Arduino boards before.
Just keep in mind that it's not limited to this
option: there's also an ofVcial SDK available to
program it in real C, this is very useful if you
want to optimize your code or do some
advanced tricks that aren't supported by the
Arduino IDE. Another possibility is to `ash it with
a LUA interpreter, so you can upload and run
LUA scripts. Or maybe you're more familiar with
Python? Then you should check out the
MicroPython Vrmware to interpret MicroPython
scripts. I'm sure there's other languages
available as well, so just do a quick Google
search and write your code in the language of
your choice.

Requirements

You'll need a couple of things in order to follow


this guide:

An ESP8266 board
A computer that can run the Arduino IDE
(Windows, Mac or Linux)
A USB-to-Serial converter, it is very
important that you use a 3.3V model*
A USB cable
A 3.3V power supply or voltage regulator*
A Wi-Fi network to connect to

(*) Your board may already include these. More information


can be found in the next chapter.

Next chapter

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