On the power front, I'm going to have to come up with something. I thought that the MB102 would make it easy, but without an appropriate wal-wart or male-male USB cable... If I can't find a wal-wart nearby, I'll just have to wait for the cables to arrive (ordered last night), I might have to rig something up. Then again, there is always batteries. I really hate having to employ a breadboard just to get the darn thing powered and programmed. Making it convenient to program goes a long way to encouraging one to fiddle. Not complaining. Just saying I need to find/build something to make it convenient.
On the GPIO front, I wouldn't have ordered the ESP-01 if I had read Kolban's book before hitting EBay. The ESP-12 and a breadboard adapter are a better fit for getting started. There's also the issue of shielding.
eduperez wrote:My FTDI exposes the 5v line from the USB connection; I attached a small DC-DC converted (it's based on a LM2596, and costs less that 1$ on eBay) and have been powering a ESP-01 without issues.
I also found a bit discouraging that both GPIOs exposed on the ESP-01 are used to select the booting mode. Now, using an external GPIO expander is probably a good idea on some projects, but in my case upgrading to a ESP-12 seems more interesting.