ESP8266 Community Forum

First microprocessor I came across was the 8080 followed by the 8086. both were referred to as Microprocessors at the time 1976 . Micro-controllers were at that time small chips used in automatic lathes that had hex loaded onto them and they cut up steel.

I think its a bit of a moot point isn't it?

I've chosen to now call the ESP8266 a "Microcontroller" ...

References:
http://www.engineersgarage.com/tutorial ... controller
http://electronics.stackexchange.com/qu ... oprocessor
http://www.electronicshub.org/differenc ... ontroller/

Neil

A microcontroller is a sub-species of a microprocessor. So a microcontroller is also a microprocessor, plus, usually added, internal SRAM and FLASH and/or EEPROM and pin I/O functions. So an ESP8266 is a microcontroller (marginally, because it has the flash external and the I2C and PWM support is implemented in software).

Hi Neil,

I tried to follow your schema for connecting the REST pin to get a proper reset (page 17). However, it doesn't seem to work as expected. Occasionally it resets and indeed restarts the LUA program but 99% of the time I see the blue LED (esp12) light up shortly during the button-press and then the ESP seems to end up in some kind of limbo (garbled text on the comm stream as well) and nothing happens anymore. Only reconnecting the power does get it going again. I did use the proper components (10k resistors and the 10uF cap).
Am I missing something here? Does it suppose to reset the ESP as if you disconnect the power? Your book doesn't mention this anywhere

Cheers and thanks for the book

Danny