After the preferences have been configured, now it is time to actually get the ESP8266 SDK and tools.
For this, you need to go to the following path and follow these steps:
- Go to Tools | Board: "Arduino/Genuino Uno" | Boards Manager... :
- Subsequently, the Boards Manager will be opened.
- Go to the end of the list and select the ESP8266 board and click on Install:
- Now, depending on your internet connection, this can take some time. Sit back and relax, you are about to enter into the IoT world.
- Look for the INSTALLED message, as in this picture:
- Now, go back to Tools | Board: "Arduino/Genuino Uno" and you should see a lot of ESP8266-based boards in the lower section:
- Select NodeMCU 1.0 (ESP-12E Module) and go back to the Tools menu, where you will see other configurations that you can perform for ESP8266:
- CPU Frequency: "80 MHz": This can be changed from 80 MHz to 160 MHz
- The memory size of your module and the size of SPIFFS (1 or 3 MiB)
- The upload speed for the UART interface between your computer and the ESP8266 module. Select from Upload Speed: "115200" so that the binary file will be flashed 8 times faster than the default value of 115200:
- If you now have a module, you can connect it to your computer. Going again to Tools menu now, you will see this from the Port menu and you can go and select your serial interface connected to the ESP8266 module. For Linux, you can select /dev/ttyUSB0 and for Windows, one of your COM ports.
Before starting any program, let's look at the IDE buttons:
Let's start from left to right:
- Verify: This allows you to compile and check your code for errors
- Upload: This does what Verify does plus uploads generated firmware into ESP8266's flash memory
- New: This opens a new window so that you can create another program
- Open: This opens an existing program from your local disk
- Save: This saves your files on the disk
- Serial Monitor: This opens a window where you will be able to see and debug what you add into your program