2017 General Helpful and Reference Info and Notes

General Helpful and Reference Info

  • To set up a new ESP8266 for use with your robot:
    • Install the Arduino IDE
    • Add the ESP8266 board to the Arduino IDE

    • Add Servo, Adafruit Unified Sensor, and Adafruit DHT sensor libraries using Arduino IDE Libraries Manager.
    • Download our custom code, load it into the Arduino IDE, then upload it to the ESP8266 via USB.
  • To configure your bot’s WiFi settings, attach USB cable to the bot then use the Arduino IDE’s Serial Monitor, your operating system’s serial terminal (for Windows, try TinyTerminal), or this web-based terminal.
    • Select your Com port. Serial bit rate for the console is 9600 or 115200. Data format (parity) is N81.
    • Reset the bot (using the RST button on the ESP8266) then follow the menus provided by our custom code to connect to WiFi.

 

  • ESP8266 info
    • Comparison of ES8266 DevBoard versions
    • ESP8266 (ESP-12E) DevBoard diagram:
      nodemcu_pinout
    • Motor Shield manual
    • MotorShield diagram:
      motor_shield_diagram
    • ESP8266 to NodeMCU and Arduino to ESP8266 Pin mapping:
        • ESP8266 to NodeMCU pin mappings (from this page):
      NodeMCU ESP8266 GPIO Functions
      D0 GPIO16 LED_BUILTIN or BUILTIN_LED
      D1 GPIO5 I2C-SCL or CLK
      D2 GPIO4 I2C-SDA
      D3 GPIO0 SPI-RES or RST
      D4 GPIO2 SPI-DC
      D5 GPIO14 SPI-SCL or CLK
      D6 GPIO12 SPI-MISO
      D7 GPIO13 SPI-SDA or MOSI
      D8 GPIO15 SPI-CS or SS
      D9 GPIO3 Serial RX0
      D10 GPIO1 Serial TX0
      D11 GPIO9
      D12 GPIO10
        • Pin numbers written on the board itself do not correspond to ESP8266 GPIO pin numbers. In the Arduino IDE, constants are defined to make using this board easier:
          static const uint8_t D0 = 16;
          static const uint8_t D1 = 5;
          static const uint8_t D2 = 4;
          static const uint8_t D3 = 0;
          static const uint8_t D4 = 2;
          static const uint8_t D5 = 14;
          static const uint8_t D6 = 12;
          static const uint8_t D7 = 13;
          static const uint8_t D8 = 15;
          static const uint8_t D9 = 3;
          static const uint8_t D10 = 1;
        • For example, if you want to use NodeMCU pin 5, use D5 for pin number, and it will be translated to ‘real’ GPIO pin 14.
        • Another way to define Arduino friendly names to the ESP8266 GPIO pins is to use
          the C/C++ pre-processor directive #define as shown here:
          #define D0 16
          #define D1 5 // I2C Bus SCL (clock)
          #define D2 4 // I2C Bus SDA (data)
          #define D3 0
          #define D4 2 // Same as "LED_BUILTIN", but inverted logic
          #define D5 14 // SPI Bus SCK (clock)
          #define D6 12 // SPI Bus MISO
          #define D7 13 // SPI Bus MOSI
          #define D8 15 // SPI Bus SS (CS)
          #define D9 3 // RX0 (Serial console)
          #define D10 1 // TX0 (Serial console)

 

  • Manually sending a compiled bin to the nodemcu (instead of the normal Arduino IDE process which recompiles every time…)
    • Windows (change paths, obviously! Be in the path with the bin, or use the whole path…):
      • C:UsersmikeAppDataLocalArduino15packagesesp8266toolsesptool.4.9esptool.exe -vv -cd nodemcu -cb 115200 -cp com3 -bz 4M -ca 0x00000 -cf "AmazingRobot2017.14d.bin"