ESP8266 Thing Development Board Hookup Guide

Contributors: jimblom

Resources and Going Further

Now that you've successfully got your ESP8266 Thing Development Board up and running, it's time to incorporate it into your own project! For more information, check out the resources below:

• Schematic
• Eagle Files
• Graphical Datasheet (PDF)
• GitHub Repo (Design Files) - The ESP8266 Thing is open source hardware! If you need, or just want to look at, the PCB design files, you can find them in our hardware repo.
• SFE Product Showcase
  • SparkFun ESP8266 Dev Board
  • Product Showcase: SparkFun ESP8266 Thing & Thing Dev Starter Kits

An astoundingly awesome community has grown around the ESP8266. We owe them big time for the amazing Arduino addon they've cooperatively built. For all of your ESP8266 needs, we recommend checking out the esp8266.com Community Forum. In addition to that, here are a few ESP8266-related resources we've found incredibly helpful:

• ESP8266 GitHub User Repos -- Tons of incredible tools can be found here. From Crosstool (to compile your own Xtensa GCC, G++, etc.) to the ESP8266 Arduino GitHub Repo
• ESP8266 Community Wiki -- Related to the community forum, there's a good amount of information available in this wiki.
• NodeMCU Firmware and the NodeMCU Flasher -- NodeMCU is a popular firmware for the ESP8266. It implements a LUA-based interpreter on the ESP8266 MCU.
• Espressif Board Forums -- Espressif, the manufacturers of the ESP8266, have a forum of their own. You can sometimes find updated software development kit downloads, or other helpful links here.
• Espressif GitHub Repos -- Espressif is also somewhat active on GitHub. They host a couple versions of the SDK here.

Need a little project inspiration, now that you've got your ESP8266 Thing up-and-running? With its deep sleep ability, the Thing is a great foundation for a WiFi-based weather station, a friendly, huggable, interactive plushy. Maybe some of these related SparkFun tutorials will help spur some ideas.

Or check out SparkFun's project spotlight on the SparkFun Rogue Router for a Solar Powered File Server with the ESP8266:

Or check out some of these blog posts for ideas: