So, wanting to make a start at all things IoT, and after some positive encouragement from a good chap on here, I took a look around the interwebby thing today, but now have some questions to ask if I may.
I was advised to take a look at a Wemos D1 mini v2.2 Dev board, which looks great. Then I spotted a WiFi shield board, which confused me. Then I spotted a combination of the two, which confused me even more. All based around the ESP2286. Then I watched a superb video about getting the WiFi shield + Wemos D1 hooked up to freeboard.io using deeet.io - which looked utterly superb.
Now though, it's somewhat left me a tad confused as to what the difference is between the Wemos and Shield, and exactly what I'd need in order to get started with IoT.
Can someone please offer a little clarification here for me please? Do I only need a Wemos D1, or shield, or both?
Also, I notice the Wemos and shield have Flash ram on board! Does this mean I can upload sketches to them without the need to have an Arduino UNO attached? As you can tell, I'm a tad confused.
Everything WiFi/MCU/RAM is on the the tiny ESP module.
Once it's programmed, only that and a battery would be enough to get on the LAN/Internet.
The boards you mention hold the supporting parts.
3.3volt power supply, Lipo battery management (if any), USB-Serial chip, reset button, easier access to the pins, LED status lights etc.
Like Wawa said, the ESP is a System on a Chip that has both a microcontroller and a WiFi-transceiver built-in. It's like an Arduino, but with WiFi hardware in the main chip.
So it doesn't make any sense to add a WiFi shield to an ESP8266 dev board.
And I'd definitely recommend checking out some of Anereas Spiess's other videos as well. (It may take some time to get used to his accent, but the content is great.)
Would you believe - I have alread saved your excellent page on my iPad, which I read through (skimmed) earlier. I plan on reading it in more detail as soon as I have found an answer to my dilemma. But what an utterly fantastic resource that is, huge respect to you sir for putting that together. It really is very, very good.
I do have a further question for you if you are able to advise please.
Are there any ESP8266 boards that DON'T use the CH340 USB-Serial chipset? Sadly my mac is just not compatible with the CH340 (I discovered recently after purchasing a nano that used it - and could not get it working at all despite many hours). So, I am after a WiFi board that doesn't use the CH340 set, or, is there another way to programme the ESP8266?
Any help you can offer would be greatly appreciated, Pieter.
You could install Linux
The Adafruit Feather Huzzah uses a CP2104, not sure if it works on Mac.
You could buy an AI Thinker ESP-12 or something similar, and use a separate FTDI board (I'm using this one + extra headers to have access to the RTS pin). But it's not as nice as a real development board.
Once you start using Over The Air (OTA) programming, you will no longer need it, you just have to get the OTA firmware on there (and when you screw up and you can't use OTA anymore).
CH340/341 seems to be the current standard.
I know nothing about Macs (don't want to either).
Maybe it's wise to post the model and the current OS/version.
There might be people out there who have cracked it.
Leo..
Are there any ESP8266 boards that DON'T use the CH340 USB-Serial chipset? Sadly my mac is just not compatible with the CH340
Nonsense! You're either running a very old OSX or you didn't look very hard for the drivers. I've been running with these chips since they arrived in the USA with zero issues on Mac. Admittedly I'm still on El Capitan but that is only due to stability with all the vm environments I support (win XP, win 7 and Unbuntu). It's really only the Win 7 that is twitchy and I know that is due the hardware virtualization (read Parallels issue) since the drivers are rock solid on a non-vm machine.
The chip manufacturer supports OSX directly. Open the page below in Google Translate and look about half way down the box in the lower right for the file that ends with "mac.zip" for the desired driver.
It's been so long since I installed that I don't remember if I had to disable SIP. After a second of thought, I'm sure I did since the item was not downloaded from the Apple App Store. No biggie there, just a couple of reboots, worst case. That's of course if you're running El Capitan or Serria.
pert:
Please post a link to where you saw the shield.
Please post a link to where you saw the combination of the two.
The D1 Mini Pro uses CP2104 but sadly nobody has made the effort to add support for it to the ESP8266 core so I can't recommend that board.
Google and Youtube and plenty of bedtime reading have been my friends these last few days, pert! I now undersdtand the difference. If one knows, then it's easy, if one doesn't know then it's not necessarily hard, but neither is it easy!
I didn't appreciate that the ESP8266 is a board on another Microcontroller and thought it could only be used as a module with the Arduino, I didn't appreciate that it is a stand alone micro in itself - and is one that is far more powerful than the Arduino.
I have bought both the NodeMCU and Wemos D1 Pro Mini - so I can have a play now!
The D1 Mini Pro uses CP2104 but sadly nobody has made the effort to add support for it to the ESP8266 core so I can't recommend that board.
It works great for me and I would recommend it. Works just fine with the esp core. The only thing that is missing is support for using the full 16MB flash, last I checked. You only get to use 4MB. So that's only 128 times more than you get on an Uno, instead of 512 times more.
Its a circuit to monitor temp, humidity & soil moisture level in my greenhouse, and control a 12V pump for irrigation. The mini pro is at the top left of the breadboard (blue pcb). You can also see an ads1115 i2c 4-channel A/D module (purple pcb), a DC-DC voltage adaptor (green pcb), an am2320b i2c temp/humidity sensor (the black thing) and an FQP30N06L MOSFET.
avr_fred:
Nonsense! You're either running a very old OSX or you didn't look very hard for the drivers. I've been running with these chips since they arrived in the USA with zero issues on Mac. Admittedly I'm still on El Capitan but that is only due to stability with all the vm environments I support (win XP, win 7 and Unbuntu). It's really only the Win 7 that is twitchy and I know that is due the hardware virtualization (read Parallels issue) since the drivers are rock solid on a non-vm machine.
The chip manufacturer supports OSX directly. Open the page below in Google Translate and look about half way down the box in the lower right for the file that ends with "mac.zip" for the desired driver.
It's been so long since I installed that I don't remember if I had to disable SIP. After a second of thought, I'm sure I did since the item was not downloaded from the Apple App Store. No biggie there, just a couple of reboots, worst case. That's of course if you're running El Capitan or Serria.
Nope, not nonsense. I downloaded many CH340 drivers, from many different www sites, and none of them worked. There is a well known and documented issue with this driver and certain Mac / OSx combinations, sadly I just happen to have that combination. The only solution availble for me was to boot into recovery mode and do something with 'kext' settings which I did not wish to do for numerous reasons.
So, I appreciate you are trying to help, but please don't make such sweeping assumptions that you are correct, as I am afraid your assumptions are wrong; I am not running an old version of OSx (I am on El Cap 10.11.6) and neither did I spend little time looking for the drivers. Not only did I spend a disproportionate amount of time looking for and downloading drivers that did not work, but I actually spoke in person with several knowledgeable people (some I knew prior, and others I didn't) about the issue.
I am glad though, that you managed to get the CH240 chipset working for you.
theMusicMan:
I see my Wemo D1 Pro Mini board in the board selector just fine!
No, you see "WeMos D1 R2 & mini". It says nothing about Pro. The D1 Mini Pro has a 16 MB flash memory chip, the D1 Mini has a 4 MB chip. The little bit of research I did on the subject showed people attempting to use a modified boards.txt, written by someone who doesn't even own a Pro, to add support for the pro and finding that some functions did not work:
By using the D1 Pro as a D1 you are losing the main reason for paying $1.50 extra. However, the external antenna connector could be very useful in some applications so that might still be worth the extra cost.
pert:
No, you see "WeMos D1 R2 & mini". It says nothing about Pro. The D1 Mini Pro has a 16 MB flash memory chip, the D1 Mini has a 4 MB chip. The little bit of research I did on the subject showed people attempting to use a modified boards.txt, written by someone who doesn't even own a Pro, to add support for the pro and finding that some functions did not work: WEMOS D1 mini Pro - 16M supporting · Issue #2581 · esp8266/Arduino · GitHub
By using the D1 Pro as a D1 you are losing the main reason for paying $1.50 extra. However, the external antenna connector could be very useful in some applications so that might still be worth the extra cost.
Ahh, I get you now, sorry!
Though, I used this board successfully when my D1 Mini Pro was connected. What was notable was the compile time was significantly faster on the Wemos board than when I used the same sketch with the NodeMCU board.
That's interesting. Compile time is really a consideration for ESP8266 development. When I have to do a bunch of compiles to test and troubleshoot it really slows things down and makes me lose my train of thought as I get distracted trying to multitask.
pert:
That's interesting. Compile time is really a consideration for ESP8266 development. When I have to do a bunch of compiles to test and troubleshoot it really slows things down and makes me lose my train of thought as I get distracted trying to multitask.
Why so cocky and sarcastic? Simply no need for it. Makes you come across as an arrogant person.
By using the D1 Pro as a D1 you are losing the main reason for paying $1.50 extra. However, the external antenna connector could be very useful in some applications so that might still be worth the extra cost.
For me the extra flash was not important. My sketches have never got close to 1MB. I have not yet used SPIFFS. For me the external antenna option is the selling point of the pro.
What was notable was the compile time was significantly faster on the Wemos board than when I used the same sketch with the NodeMCU board.
I don't own a nodeMCU board, so I'm no expert, but if you asked me to guess, I would have said there would be zero difference in compile time between the two boards. I can't think of a reason why there would be a difference, because they have the same chip.
