ESP8266 Community Forum

Hello,

I just received my ESP8266 board (from adafruit) today. I have started to look around to see how it works and saw a lot of tutorials and support, but I did not find what I would like to do.
I would like to use the ESP8266 as a module which allows to access to wifi from a linux board (let say rapsberry for example), just like a dongle. I have understood ESP8266 is much more than that, but is there a way to flash a firmware on the esp8266 and build linux kernel with a driver in a way that I could use esp8266 to create an access point from the linux board ?
My goal is then to create a local web server on the linux board.

Is that possible ? Thank you !

Perhaps the simplest approach would be to flash the AT firmware, and attach the ESP to a serial port on the Linux box.

Then use the AT commands to send and receive data. Have a look at this thread:
https://askubuntu.com/questions/192717/how-to-talk-to-usb-modem-in-linux

If it really is a raspberry board you are using then either getting a model with built in wifi ( zerowW or Pi3 onwards) or plugging a standard wifi usb dongle in sounds like an easier approach to allowing it to be used as a AP. Dongles are available for ~£1.50 and driver support is built in.

You can connect the ESP via serial an this SLIP software on the ESP: https://github.com/martin-ger/esp_slip_router

But as said before: build-in WiFi or a USB dongle would be the easier and much faster solution.