ESP8266 developing using an Arduino

RE: ESP8266 developing using an Arduino

pmohan — Wed, 31 Dec 2014 06:56:41 GMT

I am surprised about the constant note on all articles related to esp8266 about level shifting. It never worked for me when I used level shifting. Threw it all out and connected directly and it works like a charm. Moreover the data sheet seem to suggest the Digital pins are tolerant upto 6v.. See the quote from datasheet and my working version of esp8266 without level shifing here..

Part 3.3: Arduino Uno + ESP8266 + Eclipse Ponte HTTP Bridge = MQTT Magic

RE: ESP8266 developing using an Arduino

scargill — Fri, 05 Dec 2014 22:23:10 GMT

Some comments - using 9600 is fine - originally I thought that it might be a good idea to use 115k - but I was forced to use 9600 by the Lua firmware (and if you're not familiar with that, head over to my blog where you'll find lots on the subject) and actually it's not so bad - so - first things first - you absolutely MUST use level shifting, there is even a possibility of damaging the chip without it (unless of course you are using a 3v3 micro). You don't need it for the output from the ESP chip - but for input I took a 560r resistor from (in my case) the Arduino output to the ESP, then a 1k resistor from the ESP to ground, hence effectively limiting the input voltage - similarly with the reset - and at some point you will need the reset.

As for serial itself, it is really worth considering unless you're on a REALLY tight budget, the MEGA boards, they have 2 UARTS so you don't have to worry about software UARTS and these boards from China are now as low as £8. Why is a software UART a bad idea? Well it depends on what you're doing but it uses interrupts and so again in the case of the simpler micros, if you're messing with anything else that uses interrupts you could end up with timing issues. Personally I use `184-based boards a lot (own design) - 2 UARTs, 128K Flash and plenty of RAM.

Anyway for anyone interested in the ESP8266 and the various boards such as the ESP-01, ESP-03 etc etc my blog has links to just about everything else and this morning I made some improvements to a serial terminal I put together specifically for messing with these boards.

Great article, if only everyone would put in so much detail and a nice diagram.

RE: ESP8266 developing using an Arduino

Problemchild — Mon, 10 Nov 2014 22:18:19 GMT

Why did you reduce the port speed to 9600 baud on the ESP rather than setting your UART to 115K?

Wouldn't that be more performant?

RE: ESP8266 developing using an Arduino

Former Member — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 07:40:36 GMT

Thanks, it is a good starting point for beginners with ESP8266