- Fri Jun 09, 2017 2:42 pm
#66959
I wanted to post my experience with the ESP8266 and perhaps get some feedback.
I won't brag of my accomplishments, but I have a lot of experience with software and micros, so not a newbie.
I have an application that you could say it boils down to just turning on/off a bunch of leds. The physical layout is rather complicated, but the user interface is turning on/off leds, which can be 200 different ones. In the past I'd use a LCD interface, but this is 2017, and I wanted a phone or laptop to control everything. And I didn't want the user to download and install any software, which pretty much leaves using a web interface connecting over wifi. This is where the esp8266 comes in.
I really dislike having to downloading and installing software to do anything, and I was hoping to just use a esp8266 as-is, using the existing AT commands, and interface to it from a MSP430 uart. I didn't even have a usb-serial device, why need it, I have uart on the msp430. Well that worked, but it didn't. I got a usb-uart device just to check on the AT commands, and of course I had to download and install a usb-uart device driver for Windows, and of course, it didn't work under windows vista, because my computer is old and a refuse to download and install anything newer because it breaks everything that is already working..so I download and install some older driver from who-knows-where and it works, and the AT commands do everything they are supposed to, but the msp430 can't send replies faster than a snail going uphill, this is just unacceptable.
So now I must find another solution. Everything else requires downloading and installing all kinds of stuff. The best option I see is to use VirtualBox so I download and install a bunch of sh*t in a virtual machine so it doesn't mess up my existing environment. Of course, to do that I must download and install VirtualBox first,
and following https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYEzEFH5LiM excellent video, I did it, but of course it worked until I installed the guest extensions needed to share folders, and then it crashed. I had to turn off embedded page faults for the AMD processor, and now it works. Followed the second great video to install the esp sdk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-oSjMCmNYk&t=340s
which of course means downloading and installing all kinds of sh*t.
Then I need to get the USB-serial device to work, and that doesn't work.
Digging deep finally found the solution to disable "UpperFilters" in registry. Yeah, hack the windows registry. But now I have everything I need, and I get "blinky" to run, finally, after spending countless hours to get a web interface that took 5x longer than my basic app itself took, I have it. I can download and run my C-code on the esp8266,
and I have implemented SPI on it to another device, so I don't need another processor, all done on the ESP8266. It just took many gigabytes and uncounted hours to make it happen.
I know there are other ways to program these boards, Arduino IDE, LUA, Basic,
but all involve downloading stuff, and in my case having to learn new languages, whereas I do all my micro work in C.
The bottom line here is do others experience this download frustration?
I am thinking I need to capitalize all these hours and do something useful for others, besides myself now being able to add wifi to my projects, and what I think would be useful is a way to use these boards without downloading and installing any software,
which seems to me this must be a web based kind of IDE.
I won't brag of my accomplishments, but I have a lot of experience with software and micros, so not a newbie.
I have an application that you could say it boils down to just turning on/off a bunch of leds. The physical layout is rather complicated, but the user interface is turning on/off leds, which can be 200 different ones. In the past I'd use a LCD interface, but this is 2017, and I wanted a phone or laptop to control everything. And I didn't want the user to download and install any software, which pretty much leaves using a web interface connecting over wifi. This is where the esp8266 comes in.
I really dislike having to downloading and installing software to do anything, and I was hoping to just use a esp8266 as-is, using the existing AT commands, and interface to it from a MSP430 uart. I didn't even have a usb-serial device, why need it, I have uart on the msp430. Well that worked, but it didn't. I got a usb-uart device just to check on the AT commands, and of course I had to download and install a usb-uart device driver for Windows, and of course, it didn't work under windows vista, because my computer is old and a refuse to download and install anything newer because it breaks everything that is already working..so I download and install some older driver from who-knows-where and it works, and the AT commands do everything they are supposed to, but the msp430 can't send replies faster than a snail going uphill, this is just unacceptable.
So now I must find another solution. Everything else requires downloading and installing all kinds of stuff. The best option I see is to use VirtualBox so I download and install a bunch of sh*t in a virtual machine so it doesn't mess up my existing environment. Of course, to do that I must download and install VirtualBox first,
and following https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kYEzEFH5LiM excellent video, I did it, but of course it worked until I installed the guest extensions needed to share folders, and then it crashed. I had to turn off embedded page faults for the AMD processor, and now it works. Followed the second great video to install the esp sdk, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-oSjMCmNYk&t=340s
which of course means downloading and installing all kinds of sh*t.
Then I need to get the USB-serial device to work, and that doesn't work.
Digging deep finally found the solution to disable "UpperFilters" in registry. Yeah, hack the windows registry. But now I have everything I need, and I get "blinky" to run, finally, after spending countless hours to get a web interface that took 5x longer than my basic app itself took, I have it. I can download and run my C-code on the esp8266,
and I have implemented SPI on it to another device, so I don't need another processor, all done on the ESP8266. It just took many gigabytes and uncounted hours to make it happen.
I know there are other ways to program these boards, Arduino IDE, LUA, Basic,
but all involve downloading stuff, and in my case having to learn new languages, whereas I do all my micro work in C.
The bottom line here is do others experience this download frustration?
I am thinking I need to capitalize all these hours and do something useful for others, besides myself now being able to add wifi to my projects, and what I think would be useful is a way to use these boards without downloading and installing any software,
which seems to me this must be a web based kind of IDE.
