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Comment by ohitsdom | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand the comments that ESP8266's can replace Arduinos. Don't you still need to wire the ESP8266 to a microcontroller?

I'm a hardware novice, and I love Arduinos. I'd appreciate any info to help me learn, seems like I'm missing something. To me the ESP8266 is a superior alternative to Arduino wifi shields, not the Arduino itself.

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When the ESP8266s were first introduced, they came with a closed firmware that simply responded to AT commands over a serial port. To do anything with the chip, you had to have another micro controlling it.

However, sometime after the hobbyist/maker market started to take notice of the devices, an SDK was released, allowing for code to be run natively on the devices without a separate micro.

Nowadays, there are multiple options for running code on the devices. You can do it natively via C/C++ with the SDK, or you can try out one of the other firmwares that various parties have produced, like NodeMCU (Lua) or MicroPython.

The chips are actually pretty damn powerful compared to the Atmega series micros used with the classic Arduinos. And cheap too. You can get a NodeMCU module that already has a voltage reg. and USB->UART controller on it for around $3. Very hard to beat.

Nope, the esp8266 is a microcontroller featuring a 32-bit Tensilica Xtensa LX106 running at 80 MHz. It can be overclocked to 160 Mhz, but that sucks for power.

What used to be the biggest advantage for Arduino - and still is, though diminishing quickly - is support for a variety of peripherals e.g. TFT displays, servos, analog and digital sensors.

With the proliferation of so many arduino hardware variations and knockoffs it's getting harder and harder to match the correct library with specific hardware.

While it is saved as a wifi module with a basic serial interface to be controlled from, The ESP8266 actually has a powerful microcontroller that can now easily be programmed using the Arduino IDE (and other stacks).

There are different firmwares that allow programming in Lua, Basic, Javascript... or just compile directly from C/C++

Also, don't you need weird hardware to drop the voltage and connect it to the PC? I've only managed to do anything with NodeMCU so far, which is basically ESP8266 glued to the aforementioned weird hardware.

3,3V is a pretty common if not prevalent voltage level with this type of embedded Hardware, nothing weird. Also these USB to Serial converters are pretty common.

Weird from the POV of an electronics noob, who sees ESP8266 recommended as Arduino-killer. One of the two plugs straight into PC and doesn't require a soldering iron to use...

The NodeMCU is absolutely no different than an arduino. The ESP chips are the equivalent of the AVR chips that are on an arduino. When people say "use an ESP chip" they really mean one of the many ESP based boards.

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