NodeMCU ESP8266 ESP12E DevKit & Arduino IDE (Simple IoT Prototyping)

NodeMCU DevKit is a WiFi embedded microcontroller board, effective in building IoT(Internet of Things) prototypes.

Its has ESP8266-ESP12E WiFi based SoC(System on Chip) with NodeMCU firmware.

In this instructable we gonna see in detail about this board and adding this board to your Arduino IDE.

NodeMCU is an open-source firmware and development kit that helps you to prototype your IOT product within a few Lua script lines.

OFFICIAL LINK- CLICK HERE

The ESP8266 is a low-cost Wi-Fi chip with full TCP/IP stack and microcontroller capability produced by Shanghai-based Chinese manufacturer, Espressif.

The chip first came to the attention of western makers in August 2014 with the ESP-01 module, made by a third-party manufacturer, AI-Thinker.

NodeMCU DevKit has ESP12E module.

Espressif System official website- CLICK HERE

AITHINKER blog- CLICK HERE

ESP8266 Feature:

802.11 b/g/n protocol*Wi-Fi Direct (P2P),soft-AP*Integrated TCP/IP protocol stack*Integrated TR switch, balun, LNA, power amplifier and matching network*Integrated PLL, regulators, and power management units*+19.5dBm output power in 802.11b mode*Supports antenna diversity*Power down leakage current of < 10uA*Integrated low power 32-bit MCU*SDIO 2.0, SPI, UART*STBC, 1x1 MIMO, 2x1 MIMO*A-MPDU & A-MSDU aggregation & 0.4μs guard interval*Wake up and transmit packets in < 2ms*Standby power consumption of < 1.0mW (DTIM3)

ESP-12E are altogether 16 pin counts, The external size of the module is 16mm *24 mm *3mm .The type of Flash integrated in this module is an SPI flash, the capacity of which is 4 MB,the package size of which is SOP-210mil.The antenna applied on this module is a 3DBi PCB-on-board antenna.

ESP12E DATASHEET

First board from NodeMCU was V0.9 followed by V1.0.

For detailed comparison- CLICK HERE

Amica boards are official an others like Lolin are just clones.Clones may come with additional features like Vin pins.

There are some pins in the board that are RESERVED(unused).

The boards has CP2102 USB to UART bridge.

Arduino is a simple prototyping platform that is popular among many electronics hobbyist, makers and engineers. Make sure you have the latest Arduino IDE version i.e >1.6.5, if not download it from HERE

Download the driver for the board CP2102 Driver(click this).

Open the IDE follow these steps,

Click to Files>Preference> copy and paste the URL

http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json to Additional Boards Manager URL.

Now download esp8266 boards in Tools>Board>Board manager, and select Nodemcu V1 board.