nano + esp8266. clean firmware flash for esp needed?

Projects General Guidance
1

Hi all.

I have a voltmeter monitoring my leisure battery inside my campervan. This is built on an arduino nano.

I also have an esp8266 module leading around and figured why not have it show the voltage on my iot dashboard.

There are enough tutorials telling me how to do this so I'll probably manage. However i had one question in mind.

The sketch will go on the arduino. I have used the esp as an accespoint before so the is a sketch uploaded to the esp too.

Is it needed to flash the esp with a new clean firmware again before i can use it on the nano or will it somehow just ignore whatever sketch that's on it?

2

Yes.

3

Thanks.

After some more searching i found out it needs to be the esp8266 AT flash file.

So i guess the last one to be found on Espressif website is ESP8266 AT Bin V1.7.0

And if i dont like this setup and want to use the the esp for something else i can just upload a sketch on it or is there something else needed to be flashed first?

I found some other websites talking about creating a nodemcu firmware online. There is so much options to choose on the nodemcu-build.com site i have no idea about what to choose, that would need a lot more research first.

So i was hoping that the esp8266 at would be enough :slight_smile:

4

I am guessing that you have the ESP-01 module so you have limited IO pins.

If you have the more powerful versions of the ESP8266 modules, then you may want to consider eliminating the Arduino Nano altogether and just use the ESP8266 with Arduino core for ESP8266 firmware available at GitHub - esp8266/Arduino: ESP8266 core for Arduino

5

You are right it is indeed the ESP-01 module. I do have a nodeMCU v0.9 too but prefer to keep that for some projects that need more then only 3 pins.

This will do i guess, will try to flash the AT firmware on it tomorrow.

6

As I understand it, the ESP8266 has two distinct areas of flash programming. One contains the complete WiFi stack API and is never in the usual run of things, altered. It also contains the bootloader.

The other is the "application" area which you replace with your desired - application. By default, it is loaded with the "AT" application; if you uploaded something else and now want the "AT" back, you have to re-install it.

7

Paul__B thank you that was informative.

To re-install the AT i need to use a flash tool, but to put any arduino build sketch on it i can 7se the IDE. Like i said i wil probable give this a shot tomorrow, wil report back.