ESP8266 Community Forum

- Wed Sep 07, 2016 9:21 am #54644 This was the article that introduced me to the ESP and BASIC:-
/http://hackaday.com/2015/11/28/basic-on-the-esp8266/
which pointed to this posting:-
http://www.picbasic.co.uk/forum/showthread.php?t=20908&p=135556#post135556

What got me was the size of the thing - in fact the first module I bought was slightly smaller than the -01 (the -11 not -03 as I wrongly quoted in a previous post). It had the advantage of not having any LEDs to spoil the current consumption in the first application of greenhouse temperature and humidity logger to Thingspeak.

If BASIC no longer supports the smaller boards then I suspect people will be discouraged from starting to use it. Perhaps a smaller version could be selected when the Flasher is told what the memory size is?

I use either a nodemcu or sparkfun thing for development but transfer the completed program to a smaller board when completed.

I have already had to compile BASIC due to a problem in the ESP IR library but I really don't want to have to reverse engineer it to remove unwanted libraries each time a new version comes out.

I think I have to agree with Electroguard's well-reasoned post above.

- Thu Sep 08, 2016 2:30 am #54674 Kind of a non issue really..

Esp-01 useres can upgrade memory, swap the esp with a esp-12, use version 2.0 or the current version of basic, or go back to using it as a controller, either as shipped or by using the IDE.

ESP-basic takes this SOC out of the usual controller realm. Making it dead easy to prototype or alter its functionality. TheESP with ESP basic has its own niche, design for flexibility. ot just for the creator of a device, but also for the end-user to personalize or add functionality without having to be a bitbanger.

I seen no reason to halt any development!

- Thu Sep 08, 2016 4:06 am #54676 Seems to me that mmiscool must be a bit disappointed by the size of the poll - only 21 votes cast. That's 4 people actively using the forum who see retaining support for small units as essential. I'm sure there are very many more actually using espbasic than responding to the poll.

I agree it would be lovely to have a streamlined version to support only the essential stuff. The definition of essential is of course what I want, not what anybody else needs. And there is only one mmiscool.

As far as hardware costs go, I can't see anybody having hundreds of esp01s driven by espbasic. Surely the target for Espbasic is primarily hobbyists, doing stuff on a low volume basis. There are commercial producers delivering more products at affordable prices for home automation by the day and available through your local diy store. For me the attraction is I can do things that are a bit less commonplace, with little effort, using a language that's pretty quick to learn.

If you're concerned about fitting it into low flash units, in volume quantities, on a production basis, I'd do proof of concept with espbasic then port to c++. And beware the liability issues - there's a reason why the likes of microsoft have a lot of disclaimers. And buying in and reselling hardware may make you liable for its shorcomings - for example, if in europe, the manufacturers of the sonoff tell me it isn't ce compliant.

Don't think any functionality has been intentionally dropped going from v2 to v3. The common approach to maintaining code compatability between versions is to support both, but deprecate the older style. That's not practical if you want to keep code size to a minimum, so freezing the v2 and only doing critcal bugfixes seems sensible to me. Appreciate having to rework/test for v3 is frustrating, and I'm not really clear what the major differences between 2 and 3 are, but mmiscool is the architect of the whole thing and that's good enough for me. Not like I'm paying for it.

It's great that people are willing to contribute to the documentation of this. Really helpful to all us beginners. I know how much work producing documentation is, and how much it would cost to get it done professionally. And how disheartening it must be if you feel that that work has been wasted. At the same time, mmiscool must be the owner of the project, maybe before starting on major work a post asking about anything in the pipeline? It must be very hard for mmiscool to balance all the eggs.....

- Thu Sep 08, 2016 4:35 am #54677 Hi, slightly off topic but may have some relevence - has anyone seen an ESP8266-12 to -01 converter PCB. I'm only buying -12's now but at some time will need to replace some -01's that I have in service. If not I may have to design one (with added deep sleep option).