I have tried out both the NodeMcu https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-firmware and the NodeLua https://github.com/haroldmars/nodelua firmware over the last few days.
I hope to give some basic information and also gather other's views - perhaps from project contributors/creators even? I am enormously grateful to the developers of both projects and I have no personal axe to grind or investment with anyone else. However, my energies are best focused on a single platform for the next few days rather than splitting my time on both.
I am trying to choose which firmware to investigate, as I love the idea of being able to write userland code in lua and have it just run. But neither comes with MQTT integrated (yet! - hint hint ) so I may be forced to try and add it in myself. So which one is more likely to be useful to me today?
They are both open source - which means I can develop against them both and be assured that I can't be suddenly locked out of my work. In terms of traction and trajectory - it seems like NodeMcu has got more of both. It has a dedicated sub-area of the forum here, for example. Also there seem more evidence that this project has a trajectory and how it will keep going and growing past the next few commits.
The NodeMcu project is much more active on GitHub with more commits, branches and contributors, together with many more stars and forks. Recent activity might be a bit unfair - as we've just come through Christmas and New Year etc.
In terms of built-in features, it seems like NodeMcu also has more, like I2C and DS18B20.
So please add your input here - seems a little one-sided but I haven't used the NodeLua firmware as much as the other one so perhaps I'm missing some things out?