First steps with the ESP8266

The first steps are with an ESP8266-01.

Step 1

Connect via a FTDI to the usb of your PC. I'm using FTDI Basic Program Downloader USB to TTL FT232 and Ubuntu 14.04.

Pin layout

see http://playground.boxtec.ch/doku.php/wireless/esp8266

Now map your ftdi pins to the esp8266 pins like this:

ESP

<->

FTDI

RX

TX

TX

RX

CH_PD

3.3V

GPIO 0

GND

VCC

3.3V

GND

GND

Step 2

Clone https://github.com/themadinventor/esptool

and run esptool flash_id to see if everything works.

The output for my unflashed esp8266 was:

Manufacturer: c8
Device: 4013

Step 3

Get your new firmware to flash on your esp8266. For example the nodemcu one: https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-firmware/tree/master/pre_build/latest

And now flash it:

sudo python esptool.py write_flash 0x00000 nodemcu_latest.bin

Step 4

Before using the esp8266, the remove GPIO from GND!!

Test with a simple wifi connection in Lua.

One way to upload your lua code is https://github.com/4refr0nt/luatool .

Another quite easy way with GUI is http://esp8266.ru/esplorer/