Getting Started

What you will need:

• ESP8266-based hardware
• Arduino IDE + Arduino ESP8266 core

Hardware:

The code examples in this blog are tested on:

• ESP-01S
• Sonoff Basic
• Sonoff S20
• Sonoff SV
• Wemos D1
• NodeMCU

They will almost certainly run on a number of other devices / dev boards, but the ones above are "guranteed"

ESP-01S

To be honest, I would avoid using any ESP-01 board until you are completely familiar with programming the ESP8266. They have extremely limited GPIO, are breadboard unfriendly and the non-S variants have insufficient RAM for OTA updates. They are also a bit of a nightmare to upload and you need an additional adapter. Having said all that, they are cheap cheap cheap and tiny so there are good reasons why I use the ESP-01S but until you've learned what they are and feel a bit more confident - avoid.

Where to buy: TBA

Sonoff

I love these things! They are "as cheap as chips" and wonderfully useful. A lot of people spend a lot of time and money trying hack together their own equivalents, but - trust me - save yourself a lot of time / effort / pain / money by going for these first if all you need is a simple WiFi-controlled switch.

Where to buy: ITEAD's site is the best place to make sure you don't get "knockoff" copies:
10% OFF for Nextion, Sonoff, Raspberry Pi in Itead

Wemos D1

If you need more than a just a switch or plenty of GPIOs for sensors etc then the Wemos D1 is the dev board of choice. It's smaller and cheaper then the NodeMCU and does everything that 'MCU can do. I honestly don't know why people buy the 'MCU* when the Wemos D1 is so much better in many ways. (*I actually do - but for this blog and my own home automation system, the D1 wins hands-down)

Where to buy: TBA

NodeMCU (v0.9)

I keep one "in stock" to make sure all the code runs on it, but that's pretty much all I do with it - the Wemos D1 is so much better!

Where to buy: TBA