ESP8266 + Arduino IDE 1.6.4 Portable - Full Quick Install Guide

If anybody wants to start develop new ESP8266 projects directly in Arduino IDE and needs some guidance, please find below a full comprehensive step-by-step Install Guide for a Arduino 1.6.4 IDE Portable environment that might help you for having a smooth install process. It's including also all needed ESP8266 packages and tools, making it ready for programming your ESP Boards.

As been done as a fully Portable installation you can avoid the way Arduino is installing the files all over the place on your system. All your Arduino IDE v 1.6.4 files, including ESP8266 extension, sketches, installed libraies, etc will be located only under the new created "arduino-1.6.4" folder. And yes, your install location can be in this case a Stick/SD Card or external HDD/SSD Drive so you can take your whole installed Arduino IDE and your projects everywhere, just ready for plug&coding!

Install Guide

First RUN test:

For reference: ESP8266 + Arduino IDE 1.6.4 Portable - Full Install step-by-step Guide

1. Download and Install Arduino IDE 1.6.4

http://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/Software

In a Windows 7/64 environment I preffer to use the ZIP file below, and install it manually, in a more compact and portable manner.

http://arduino.cc/download.php?f=/arduino-1.6.4-windows.zip

Create a New Folder where do you want your Arduino IDE installation to be (ex: E:\ESP8266_Arduino)

Copy and Extract arduino-1.6.4-windows.zip in the new folder created above. 7zip program is your good friend here.

Delete arduino-1.6.4-windows.zip to free your space
Inside the new "arduino-1.6.4" subfolder create a New Folder called "Portable"

- Go to File
- Preferences - in Preferences window go to "additional boards manager URL's" where you need to paste the following link:
https://adafruit.github.io/arduino-board-index/package_adafruit_index.json

- Click OK button.
- Go to Tools
- Boards - > Boards manager, in the Boards manager window select "contributed" from the TYPE drop
- Select ESP8266 by ESP8266 community forum and version 1.6.2

- Press Install.
- Installation process can take a while, so please be patient! A cup of tea/coffee might work here :)

- Restart IDE
- Select your board as ADAFRUIT HUZZAH ESP8266 or GenericESP8266 Module. For CBDBv2 EVO use provided config file or GenericESP8266.
- Select CPU frequency: 80Mhz
- Select your Serial port and upload speed. Looks like it's working upto 921600 but quite unstable. Keep the usual 115200 baud for more solid upload results.

If all the steps before endend successfully You are ready for your first ESP8266 Program written in Arduino IDE:

/*
  Blink
  Turns on an LED on for one second, then off for one second, repeatedly.

  Most Arduinos have an on-board LED you can control. On the Uno and
  Leonardo, it is attached to digital pin 13. If you're unsure what
  pin the on-board LED is connected to on your Arduino model, check
  the documentation at  http://arduino.cc

  This example code is in the public domain.  modified 8 May 2014
  by Scott Fitzgerald
 *

/ the setup function runs once when you press reset or power the board
void setup() {
  // initialize digital pin 13 as an output.
  pinMode(15, OUTPUT);
}

// the loop function runs over and over again forever
void loop() {
  digitalWrite(15, HIGH);   // turn the LED on (HIGH is the voltage level)
  delay(1000);              // wait for a second
  digitalWrite(15, LOW);    // turn the LED off by making the voltage LOW
  delay(1000);              // wait for a second
}