Now here is news – fancy forking out $5 for a microcontroller with Wi-Fi capability? Well, that is what the ESP8266 is all about, and we are pleased to say that it is also Arduino-compatible, now how about that? I suppose you can say that the ESP8266 happens to be one of those rare gems that is released once in a while, and boy, what a release it is!
The ESP8266 happens to be a UART to Wi-Fi SoC that is built around a Tensilica Xtensa LX3 processor, where it will cost an extremely affordable $5 to boot. First marketed as a Serial-to-WiFi adaptor, where it will be accompanied by a firmware that supports a simple AT command set to configure as well as to control the wireless module, it looks set to do a whole lot more this time around.
One might even take things one step further by claiming that the ESP8266 has been released just in time for Arduino Day! It boasts of basic functions such as pinMode, digitalRead and digitalWrite, where it will also perform interrupts, alongside the millis and micros functions, not to mention sensible things done to delay to take account of the background activity of Wi-Fi and TCP tasks. Any takers?