ESP8266 as a Pi Zero Wifi / TCP/IP handler
Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2015 1:26 pm
With the announcement of the Pi Zero in the last few days, I am very excited by the prospect. However, I note that it has no WiFi built in. I got to thinking that maybe we could attach an ESP8266 through the interface pins of the Pi Zero and write a kernel driver for Linux to drive the ESP8266. I suggest this as Linux already has a TCP/IP stack and we really don't want to invent or use private protocols (eg. serial AT) to interact with the partner board. If my theory holds, then, in principle, we could leverage the radio transmission (or related) protocols that are expected by the higher level TCP/IP stack in Linux and fire those through GPIO / SPI / I2C to an app flashed on the ESP8266 that would drive its appropriate low level components.
Does anyone know of any projects already going down this route ... the last thing I want to do is suggest another and would much rather join one that is already in flight.
Does anyone know of any projects already going down this route ... the last thing I want to do is suggest another and would much rather join one that is already in flight.