Posting in this forurum as it seems to be the most appropriate place for this. If not please let me know where to re-post (and sorry).
I have purchased an Arduino Uno compatible WiFi shield from eBay. It has an ESP8266 chip on it. I have put it on top of the Uno board and ran the demo sketch using the WiFiEsp library from https://github.com/bportaluri/WiFiEsp.
Unfortunately I get the errors ">>> TIMEOUT >>> ", "No tag found", "Warning: Unsupported firmware" and "WiFi shield not present"
I have taken some photos of the shield itself and the way I have it connected to the Uno. There are no additional wires - I wonder if im missing that I need to wire stuff up although I assumed that a shield connected simply by sitting it on top of the Arduino. Also I noted there is a 4-switch block on the shield labeled KXK. These switches are all in the "OFF" position - again whaether I need to use these I am not sure.
My intention is to have the WiFi shield / Arduino run as a server so I can send HTTP requests to it to monitor sensor inputs and control some relays as appropriate.
Hope this makes sense. The photos are posted here: https://goo.gl/photos/RGnUCbBmxdJwWQpf9
tip2tail