Setting up your ESP8266 with ESPEasy
This step is pretty easy if you just read the pages starting at
http://www.esp8266.nu/index.php/Tutorial_ESPEasy_Firmware_Upload
Follow along at each link on the bottom of the page to configure the ESP for your wireless network
I have the ESP12E Dev Board and it is great for doing testing and setting up different sensors. It has onboard usb to serial and can be programmed and powered via the usb connection. The board also has two LEDs so that you can immediately start learning how to control devices via GPIO. I did not know how to do it until I found ESPEasy. A great manual for the ESP8266 can be found here:
Its free but its worth paying Kolban for his work. Its pretty much a ESP8266 bible!!!
The ESPEasy devs have created a flash tool and a stable image that works very well. The download of the image includes the flash tool and several bin (images) files for the different ESP hardware models
http://www.esp8266.nu/index.php/Main_Page#Stable
Below is the input (in bold) and the some of the output after running the flash command.
C:\ESPEasyRoot>flash
Comport (example 3, 4, …) :8
Flash Size (example 512, 1024, 4096) :4096
Build (example 71, 72, …) :78
Using com port: 8
Using bin file: ESPEasy_RIng_4096.bin
esptool v0.4.6 - © 2014 Ch. Klippel ck@atelier-klippel.de
setting board to nodemcu
setting baudrate from 115200 to 115200
setting port from COM1 to COM8
setting address from 0x00000000 to 0x00000000
espcomm_upload_file
stat ESPEasy_R78_4096.bin success
…
…
…
There is also an option to compile the arduino code and load the code from an Arduino Uno. See the ESPEasy website for instructions on how to do this.
Once you have the image flashed and configured. Setup the ESP to join your wireless network as a client access point (WIFI_STA for ESPEasy)
In the top menu of the ESP web page click on Tools then Logs to make sure the ESP has a wifi connection. Dont worry about the errors on failing to find a mqtt broker