ESP8266 Community Forum

Guys:

First off I want to thank all of you for forming this community and keeping it active. I also want to thank anyone who takes the time to read this or reply.

I've recently discovered the ESP8266 and have been obsessed since. I want to get my hands on one as fast as possible, and I've decided to likely go with the ESP-03. If anyone could give me their advice on few questions, I would be extremely grateful and believe me I always pay it forward to those who have helped me even if it's down the line.

Questions:
1. What do you recommend for a development board for the ESP-03? I'm looking for something that will allow for solder less prototyping?. Something that can get me set up with the ESP-03 quick, i.e able to program via USB cable etc.

2. I understand that the ESP8266 can send a HTTP POST request without the need for a micro-controller. This is probably too good to be true, but is the ESP8266 able to perform HTTP GET requests without the need for a micro-controller. I.e is the ESP able to retrieve information from a web server(extremely minimal information, from say a text file on a website that would contain a single line of text such as "Username:17:34PM".

Guys, again, thank you so much to anyone who reads this and replies. I really appreciate it.

Cheers,
Question Asker

@1: I don't have an ESP-03, but IRRC it can be soldered to those white adapter PCBs. You also need a 3V3 regulator, an USB to serial adapter and a few pull-up/down resistors (I'd also recommend some 100nF & 100uF capacitors).
For quick prototyping I'd recommend a Wemos D1 mini or NodeMCU dev-kit (my only issue with these are the stupid pin labels which do not correspond to the chip's actual GPIO numbers).

@2: you can do pretty much anything without an additional uC, as long as memory & cpu time requirements are reasonable. HTTP GET requests are rather simple, there should be plenty of examples in any available language if you search this forum.

lethe wrote:@1: I don't have an ESP-03, but IRRC it can be soldered to those white adapter PCBs. You also need a 3V3 regulator, an USB to serial adapter and a few pull-up/down resistors (I'd also recommend some 100nF & 100uF capacitors).
For quick prototyping I'd recommend a Wemos D1 mini or NodeMCU dev-kit (my only issue with these are the stupid pin labels which do not correspond to the chip's actual GPIO numbers).

@2: you can do pretty much anything without an additional uC, as long as memory & cpu time requirements are reasonable. HTTP GET requests are rather simple, there should be plenty of examples in any available language if you search this forum.

Thank you very much for the reply Lethe. I've ordered a couple of the Adafruit HUZZAH dev boards to play around with and get familiar with the ESP8266. And thank you again for confirming that GET requests can be done. You are awesome @lethe

Cheers.