ESP8266

The ESP8266 is a low-cost Wi-Fi chip with full TCP/IP stack and MCU (Micro Controller Unit) capability produced by Shanghai-based Chinese manufacturer, Espressif Systems.

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. This small module allows microcontrollers to connect to a Wi-Fi network and make simple TCP/IP connections using Hayes-style commands. However, at the time there was almost no English-language documentation on the chip and the commands it accepted. The very low price and the fact that there were very few external components on the module which suggests that it could eventually be very inexpensive in volume, attracted many hackers to explore the module, chip, and the software on it, as well as to translate the Chinese documentation.

The ESP8285 is an ESP8266 with 1 MB of built-in flash, allowing for single-chip devices capable of connecting to Wi-Fi.

• Features:

  • 32-bit RISC CPU: Tensilica Xtensa LX106 running at 80 MHz
  • 64 KiB of instruction RAM, 96 KiB of data RAM
  • External QSPI flash - 512 KiB to 4 MiB* (up to 16 MiB is supported)
  • IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
  • Integrated TR switch, balun, LNA, power amplifier and matching network
  • WEP or WPA/WPA2 authentication, or open networks
  • 16 GPIO pins
  • SPI, I²C,
  • I²S interfaces with DMA (sharing pins with GPIO)
  • UART on dedicated pins, plus a transmit-only UART can be enabled on GPIO2
  • 1 10-bit ADC

  Nota: Both the CPU and flash clock speeds can be doubled by overclocking on some devices. CPU can be run at 160 MHz and flash can be sped up from 40 MHz to 80 MHz. Success varies chip to chip.