ESP8266 Community Forum

- Wed Jan 02, 2019 1:34 pm #79824

Sorry if you already know all this !

I don't. And I am grateful for the information.

You're welcome. I'm always impressed by your wealth of electronics knowledge, whereas mine died-out 30 years ago when I became a software guy, so I'm happy to share my part of the embedded world.

I would add : If you are used to just using Arduino IDE and you just want something that works and is easily configurable with a choice of the sdk/arduino core, and the various permutations/versions as well as support for ARM embedded then I reckon I would go straight for PlatformIO and VsCode. Eclipse is better for expert software guys who are used to tweaking settings/permutations etc. as it is more flexible and less is hidden away (of course, there is a benefit to hiding away the complexity of it all, if all you want is a standard setting). PlatformIO has the benefit of also supporting esp32, which I tried some time ago and I was impressed by how quickly I got an esp32 working. There is also debugger support which is baked-in (not tried it though).
I like Eclipse because I can build/debug common code for Linux executable and I don't know if PlatformIo does that.

I hope that makes sense.

- Fri Jan 04, 2019 12:54 pm #79867 @lucasromeiro

nice thread
thanks for opening it

my two cents:
I'm using VScode and for sure you will find there everthing you are looking for the coding part: autocompletion, formatting, version control (it's fully integrated with git and extensions like GitLens and git tree are great)

cannot help for the Platformio extension
cause I'm not using Arduino but Espressif NON-OS SDK
I'm on a linux environment with the esp-open-sdk toolchain and building/downloading is not really a big deal once you create you custom scripts (especially once you have OTA)
I use ESPlorer as a serial terminal, postman or mqttlens for interacting with the esp module through wifi.

what I'm really missing is a sort of emulator for testing the code at early stage without having to download it to the target module
really like McChubby007 approach on this point

will continue to read this thread for learning more!

https://github.com/quackmore

- Sat Jan 05, 2019 12:27 pm #79879 got curious and gave it a quick try this afternoon
so far:

The extension installs quickly and smoothly. It runs fine with VS.
Build, flashing (including flashing with Arduino OTA) and monitor available within VScode.
Uses Miniterm for serial monitor (shows up into VS terminal window).

The project tree is fixed so you will have to adapt yours.
It seems able to import Arduino projects (don't have any ...).
They uses Scons to build so there is no Makefile (this is causing me some anxiety).
Though it is possible to customize the builder adding build_flags to the platformio.ini file (per project)

PLUS:
+ package manager (YAY!), most library are available for Arduino framework only
+ debug integrated, didn't find esp8266 into supported boards (?), found ESP32 though
+ supported devices include WIFI with mDns (I've not used it but I can see my modules there)

MINUS:
+ Esp8266-non-os-sdk framework is lacking options for flashing bootloader
+ Esp8266-non-os-sdk framework is lacking options for building and flashing user1.bin and/or user2.bin

https://github.com/quackmore

- Sat Jan 05, 2019 12:43 pm #79880 Thanks for posting your results. I've never tried it with esp8266, only esp32 and that has less permutations regarding frameworks (only uses esp-idf), so doesn't have the downsides of your esp8266 findings.

It might be worth contacting the platformIO guys and see what they say, since their main goal was easy selection of all the various frameworks, SDKs etc.