GCC for the ESP8266 WiFi Module
October 2, 2014 By Brian Benchoff 34 Comments
When we first heard about it a few weeks ago, we knew the ESP8266 UART to WiFi module was a special beast. It was cheap, gave every microcontroller the ability to connect to a WiFi network, and could – possibly – be programmed itself, turning this little module into a complete Internet of Things solution. The only thing preventing the last feature from being realized was the lack of compiler support. This has now changed. The officially unofficial ESP8266 community forums now has a working GCC for the ESP8266.
I know they may not be ideal in terms of reprogramming as not all pins go to the header etc, but they are probably OK just to evaluate their use purely as a wifi module for small Arduino projects e.g. Internet of things
And I'm quite adept at soldering to tiny surface mount devices, so I can probably solder extra wires to the chip if necessary
did you hear about radino? They already merged the ESP8266 and an Arduino Micro into one single module. (www.radino.cc) and the whole thing runs on 3.3V.
They also provide a Arduino-support package on their website, e.g. containing a simple webserver example for the ESP8266. Maybe this will help someone with their first steps on ESP8266.
There will also be a breakout board for the ESP8266 available after this weekend, featuring almost all GPIOs and the ADC input pins.
Seems a bit pricey for a Leonardo + a $5 module. ie, for 69,00 €
I'm presuming they are using Leonardo as it has a true serial port free, ie that can go at 115200 rather than using software serial, which wont run that fast.
