NodeMCU with Arduino IDE

I got this LoLin NodeMcu V3 from AliExpress. It costs around USD 2.85 each. This is a very small sized board measuring 6 cm x 3 cm. 30 pins in all, 15 pins on both sides. It’s not breadboard friendly cos the width covers the breadboard leaving no place to plug in the jumper wires. It is an open-sourced IOT platform which runs on LUA scripting language.  The hardware is based on the ESP8266 chip.

What’s great about it is that you can get it to run Arduino sketches using the Arduino IDE! This is a low-priced WIFI capable device! More info here. <- click on this link to see what wonderful work these people have done!

How to program this nifty little device?

1. Download the Arduino Software – link
2. Start the software and click on the File -> Preferences
3. Click on the Additional Boards Manager URLs and enter the following: http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json
4. Click on Tools -> Boards Manager and install the ESP8266 platform.

And you are done! You can now try out your new board using Arduino IDE and run some sketches with it.

1. Plug in the board to your computer and it should detect your device.
2. Click on Tools -> Board -> NodeMCU 1.0 (ESP12-E Module)
3. Open the Blink sketch in the built-in examples and change the pin 13 to 2 and run. The LED on the board should blink as in the sketch.