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Comment by poseid | Hacker News Reader

getting started with the esp8266 was mainly for ppl with some background in soldering. also, flashing the esp8266 was not too easy (python script, some system libs needed to be present iirc). for beginners, i found arduino, tessel or espruino to be easier. also, espruino now runs on esp8266 - the ecosystem that will evolve around the esp32 will be interesting to see

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You could also buy an NodeMCU (http://nodemcu.com/index_en.html) if you don't like soldering. Personally without a formal electronics background or great soldering skills, I had not a lot of problems with setting up the ESP8266.

But I do agree that out of the box it's less "plug and play" as an Arduino.

Agreed, although I prefer the D1 mini (http://www.wemos.cc/Products/d1_mini.html) - it's just a bit smaller (and cheaper?) than the NodeMCU.

The ESP-01 (which I started with) is quite painful to program, though - it uses a bizarre baud rate (78k?) and shares its GPIO with its programming pins.

exactly, this is what i meant, for simple projects, the cheap costs vs time to invest to get it running was not worth it

I dunno, I managed to get it running within a day or two, and had zero experience in this kind of electronics before.

Used a raspberry pi to control it, with a button to switch it into programming mode. No soldering, just wires and breadboard.

But now I use a d1 mini since its more comfortable/less breakage from accidentally removing wires when cleaning.

I'm a software guy and had never picked up a soldering iron in my entire life. I managed to get my first esp8266 (the adafruit huzzah) soldiered to a little temp/humidity sensor on a small permanent breadboard (not sure the exact name) and had it pushing data into my home graphite server. Took me all of 2 days start to finish.

The ESP8266 is now supported[0] in the Arduino IDE so it’s as easy to use as any other board.

[0]https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino

This is obsolete, get a WeMos D1 mini (suggested below) and run it with PlatformIO (my favorite) or the Arduino IDE. Arduino code will need minimal changes, if any, to run on the ESP.

I tried it the other month, it works fine with Arduino.

I think Wio[1] is good choice to getting started. :)

[1]: https://github.com/Seeed-Studio/Wio_Link

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