ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi,

I was curious if there is a way to connect the ESP8266 NodeMCU over LAN without a WiFi connection using a router. I could find little to no documentation on this, so any libraries that could be used would be helpful.

If not, I'll describe my situation. I might have limited/no access to WiFi at an activity I'm doing and only want to use the ESP8266 if I am able to program it wirelessly. Thus, I need ideas on how I can use this device with limited WiFi capabilities in order to wirelessly program it, otherwise I will switch the hardware I will use. So, another possibility could be a hotspot on a phone, but that is a bad option, both because the phone service might be very little and it would be charged. Another would be bluetooth, but I found nothing about bluetooth capabilities.

If anyone has any ideas as well I'll be open to suggestions.

Thanks.

The official answer: no, the ESP8266 doesn't support a LAN connection.
The unofficial answer: there are people trying to get LAN-support going using bit-banging, though it's all proof-of-concept.

Normally you program the ESP8266 over serial BTW (although OTA is possible if implemented).

The ESP8266 doesn't have BlueTooth, but it's bigger brother the ESP32 does.