ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi,
If I am programming the esp8266 with the arduino ide, is it relevant for me to update the sdk to the latest version?
I dont understand exactly how this works... Is the sdk firmware uploaded every time I compile from arduino?
If someone can explain would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

I always thought that to use and build with the espressif sdk you had to use espressif's own build instructions and toolchain from the command line, which means you cannot use arduino ide. I could be wrong, I have never tried it, but somehow it doesn't seem correct from all the things I have read over the last 18 months and my own personal experiences. Whenever I use arduino ide with esp8266, I use the "arduino core for esp8266" source from github. Are you using this too? Arduino ide will not work for esp8266 otherwise.

Yes, I'm using the arduino core for esp8266.
I was just wondering if im using the latest underlying firmware from espressif. The way I understand it is that the arduino core is adapting the the sdk from espressif to arduino code, but at the end of the day we are using the sdk from espressif.
If any one can shed some light would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

OK, I understand a bit better what you are doing now... The arduino core has a particular version of the espressif sdk bundled with it, and the source code in the core is written for that sdk version. I rarely call sdk functions directly myself but you can if you need to. Most sdk functionality is wrapped by a function in the core, so mostly it is not necessary to call sdk functions. The version of sdk used is not the latest version from espressif, and in the changelogs for the core you can see which version it is using. I cannot recall which version that is. I've not been much use, but I thought I would explain the setup in case you didn't know this.