ESP8266 Serial-to-Internet chip? Anyone here used the ESP8266 yet?

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ESP8266 Serial-to-Internet chip?
Anyone here used the ESP8266 yet? It’s a cheap ($3-$5) system-on-a-chip with integrated Wifi, usually packaged with pre-installed firmware that makes it act like a Serial-to-Internet bridge that takes “AT” commands and performs Internet tasks.
Of course, intrepid hackers are starting to re-program the firmware with other capabilities, and to use it as a general MCU development platform that just happens to have wifi. And no, it does not use an ARM core. It uses a “Tensilica 106micro LX3” core, so FastLED ain’t gonna run directly on those chips at this point.

There’s a community forum here http://www.esp8266.com
Hackaday has several stories: http://hackaday.com/tag/esp8266/
Seeedstudio sells them: http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/WiFi-Serial-Transceiver-Module-w-ESP8266-p-1994.html

Here’s a sharp hacker who put together a breakout board for it: http://www.limpkin.fr/index.php?post/2014/11/27/A-Development-Board-for-the-ESP8266-03

As an inexpensive Serial-to-Internet bridge, it might be an interesting addition to AVR or ARM -based projects using FastLED. Anyone here tried it yet?

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Could be the perfect module to replace my NRF24L01 in the Flashled remote i build.

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I have 2 laying around, but didn’t had the time to play with it yet.

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Anything that cuts the price of IoT’ing devices has to be great…

The cost of adding an Imp or a Spark is prohibitive… And where I live, Spark can forget it… They want $75 to ship a matchbox, vs the Imp at $3.75 shipping from Sparkfun.

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I have a few but have only verified they work and can pull in web pages. I’m very excited by the SDK being developed for it and the potential of running WS2812s directly from it. (but probably not with FastLED to start, though I wouldn’t mind working on a port)

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Verrrry interesting :slight_smile:

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Oh, I also have to link to @Peter_Scargill , whose doing a whole lot of “leading the way” on these boards: http://scargill.wordpress.com
(Thanks, Peter!)

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I loaded up the latest Frankenstein ROM on one this evening. https://github.com/nekromant/esp8266-frankenstein
The Arduino 1-wire library was ported just last week so I plan on interfacing directly with DS18B20 temp sensors.

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i’ve got about 20 of the esp8266’s running 24/7 streaming UDP, so far very happy with them.

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@charlie_wallace : thanks for the field report! Can you share any more info about how you’ve got them set up and/or good places to get code?

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@Mark_Kriegsman sure can, http://hackaday.io/project/3250-cypress-psoc-4-esp8266-ws2812-rgb-xmas-lights i’m not using FastLED yet, since i’m using PSOCs but i am looking at porting it to the Cypress chip’s. I’m posting up the source/eagle files shortly, test boards have been running for about a month or more.

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Very, very cool project!

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Just got a couple of these guys last saturday with some other goods, but didn’t have time yet to give it a try;) I choosed the ESP8266-07 version. Not breadboard friendly but i want to get as much gpio as possible and the 07 has the built in ceramic antenna + the connector for an external antenna to expand the signal range. I might try to build a quadcopter later. The custom firmware with the u-boot like shell looks awesome.

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I’m late to the party, I’ve got 5 arriving directly and am keen to see how I can use them. Getting to grips with LUA over the next few days…

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@charlie_wallace how do you feed the esp´s by UDP, and which tool do you use for designing the data? I am keen for a multi esp8266 solution for ages and don´t find the right tools. As firmware i want to use cnlohr´s esp image, do you use the same?

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@Holger_Runkewitz basic firmware and sample windows/linux client is here https://github.com/charlie-x/psoc4-esp8266-ws1812 they’re mutlicast udp and its basically one byte per led element, so RGB is 3 bytes * number of leds it just broadcasts that many out per frame, no real underlying protocol. i’m using the PSOC4 though.

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@charlie_wallace Oh, thanks - I was away for a while. Thus I remember your PSOC4 hackaday entry - great. Anyway I continue in looking for a simple frontend suitable for playing with the effects and colors.