ESP8266 Community Forum

- Mon May 15, 2017 2:09 am #65937 Hi

I have been using PIC mcu's with a Mikroe development system for years but have now decided to try the ESP8266 for the wifi capability and the extensive libraries available.

My introduction has been most unrewarding, and I'm thinking I must be doing something wrong!

I found what I thought to be a simple led blinking sketch. I compiled this using the Arduino IDE with the ESP extensions. Firstly it took several long minutes to compile, then generated a huge file (>220K). I then tried to upload it, but after a few minutes encountered transmission errors! I repeated this several times unsuccessfully.

Can someone pleasetake pity on me and point me in the right direction! I really want to use the 8266 to upload data from my data logger Thingspeak.

Thanks
John

- Mon May 15, 2017 9:51 am #65941 Strange enough.
Please share more details, Arduino Setup Env, Wiring, What ESP8266 Board type, etc,etc.

ESP8266 MPDMv4 AC MAINS Dimmer Home: http://esp8266-projects.com/2016/04/mpdmv4-mains-dimmerswitch-html/
Available on Tindie: https://www.tindie.com/products/nEXT_EVO1/universal-ac-mains-dimmer-mpdmv41/

- Mon May 15, 2017 11:45 am #65945 The file size looks right. I compiled the blink sketch and it ended up about 220K in size.

Please provide more details about your hardware setup. What you are using for a board, how you have it connected to the computer. A picture might be useful as well.

- Mon May 15, 2017 1:06 pm #65946 I am newcomer to Arduino myself.

I can confirm that the file size is about right - you have to remember that all sorts of overhead and plumbing has to be compiled in as well; in order to map the Arduino conventions to ESP8266 native. If you want minimal code footprint, you'd probably be better off switching to 8266 SDK... Arduino is a aftermarket bolt-on here.

As far as upload time goes, what baud are you operating at? Even at the 112500 that I normally use it takes less than a minute, and I've successfully used 921600, where it's pretty damn fast.

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OTOH, if you want a really fast, interactive, RAD-style development environment you might consider switching to NodeMCU and Lua. You will lose the (possibly faimiliar) Arduino environment, and you will have to learn Lua instead of using C, but all the O/S stuff is preloaded into the firmware at the first flash, so all you need to do is upload the code snippets you are developing. In fact you can even use the Lua interpreter straight off the chip, without uploading code to it, until you're happy. It's a very different way of doing things.
Easier, IMHO, but the Arduino environment is much richer in readily-available libraries.