ESP8266 Community Forum

Noob questions:

What does this new Arduino software do?
How exactly can it help upgrade firmware?
Any new sketches available?

Thanks.

Tim

Sometimes being 5 minutes ahead can be of some use. I'm possibly 5 more minutes into the arduino-esp8266. If you are familiar with the ordinary arduino sketch set up then you know you put code into setup and code into loop.Setup is called once at startup and loop perpetually . The difference is the board is selected as an esp8266 board and the loader as esptool. Code that is either regular arduino code or special unique to esp8266 code goes into setup and loop. The arduino esp8266 IDE then just as with a regular arduino situation compiles and loads the code; it is just that the compile compiles code suited for the esp8266 and via the esptool it flashes it to the esp8266. An IDE that supports atmega2560 chips now also supports the esp8266 chip. Code that worked for the atmega2560 often now will work for the exp8266 and features like a webserver are supported by calls to functions that are exclusive to the esp8266. The functionality of the arduino sketch IDE is extened for esp8266 chips. Sure pins are different but if the esp has enough equivalent pins for an existing arduino sketch things could work and existing arduino code will run on the esp8266. The esp8266 is 80mhz and code size is possibly 180k an upside but esp8266 pins are scarce but if I2C or SPI busses are used the pin scarcity is not so bad.

Thanks!
I am able to select ESP8622 as the board, and get AT commands to the esp8622 via the serial monitor.
How would one use this tool to upgrade firmware?

Thanks again.

Tim