In its most common form that means transferring data from a computer with USB connection over a USB cable and a USB-to-serial converter to the device. While “higher-order” modules like NodeMCU. ESP8266, Lua, NodeMCU, Python. Categorized in: IoT. The Asmodat LUA Loader is not available for Linux, please, change your table.
“Surprisingly, there are a number of engineers and hobbyists who have not heard of this chip” For hobbyists that IS surprising. For engineers not so much. Engineers who design products for companies to mass produce and sell need to deal with FCC or their country’s equivalent certification. That is an expensive and difficult process. If they are already doing that they probably already have some company selling them chips that they solder directly to their PCBs, and having signed the NDAs they already have the full oficial documentation.
They probably aren’t interested in hobbyist modules. No, it doesn’t even matter if the module has already been aproved. Have they even been aproved? Again, it doesn’t really matter. Stick it in a product that you plan to produce and sell and you have to get it certified again as a whole.
RF is a finicky thing and the module could be reacting with your power bus or other components, maybe even metal parts of your case. This could cause it to radiate outside of it’s desired frequency or to focus energy in one direction thus going over legal limits for unlicensed operation in that direction. As a hobbyist the rule is to take reasonable care within your means to ensure that you are neither broadcasting outside your limits or worse. Interfering with someone. As a professional the bar is set a whole lot higher and things are not so easy.
When I was trying to buy a pcie mini card for my laptop (lenovo, sigh; they are infamous for the whitelist they use) I had to flash a hacked bios that removed the whitelist. When you ask lenovo why they don’t let you install your own pcie wifi card, their reply is to the effect ‘we cant guarantee fcc class b’ or some crap like that.
Clearly its bullshit. They are trying to lock you into their own cards. Strangely enough, their card IS a centrino intel card, same as what I bought at my local store. But some ID is different. The card is 100% identical, otherwise. I won’t be buying lenovo again (for several reasons). But this whitelist stuff really is so anti-consumer.
![Software Serial Esp8266 Lua Loader Software Serial Esp8266 Lua Loader](/uploads/1/2/5/4/125413762/716316151.png)
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HP plays the same game, too, btw. Actually, the FCC does permit transfer of a module cert to a device using that module so long as the device adds nothing, not even a cable or new antenna, to the RF path. So it only applies to modules with either a built-in antenna, or precisely the same cable and external antenna as it was certified with as it was certified with (provided as a certified kit by the module vendor). In the EU, full device re-certification is required, module or not. However, the top-level device cert is simplified (and much faster) if the RF module has already been certified separately. The reasoning, I believe, is the simple fact that many modules are easily misused.
So modules are still the way to go in the EU for RF sub-systems that are expected to evolve quickly. The net effect in the EU is to encourage the use of custom external antennas (since you’re doing a top-level cert anyway). @Rob The same thing that happened before NAT became a thing every home router did; you were responsible for keeping your system safe. Industry used firewalls, so did home PCs. IoT devices that are connecting to APs in the wild should be doing some kind of confirmation of their connection before sending or receiving sensitive data. How you do that is up to you, but presuming that your AP is safe because of a password and NAT is pretty foolish; if you want data from it from externally, then it has a port open to the internet at large and that port needs to be secured whether it’s IPv4 or IPv6.
My internal network, behind a rented (i know, I know) cable modem doing NAT is still IPv4 and IPv6. Does it make a difference? Not really; it wouldn’t surprise me if the cable modem is doing NAT to IPv6 and assigning the same addresses to everybody with that variety of modem. It does ensure that when I connect out to an IPv6 site, I (should, baring strange NAT on the modem/router combo) be interacting without an IPv6-to-IPv4 pipe.
But the more of us who start to switch, and demand that the big providers switch, the better we’ll be. A very helpful write-up.
You can now download ready-built toolchains too. For the Linux Arduino IDE – ESP8266 toolchain, there is an example (I haven’t tried this one) at “Programming ESP8266-EVB with Arduino IDE” by Olimex Ltd “For the equivalent Windows (64-bit only) toolchain, I downloaded and ran this one on the ESP8266 Community Forum – “This is how to install without replacing your existing IDE” at Worked first time with Arduino IDE 1.6.2. This is indeed a good writeup.
I’ve been playing with this neat chip since last fall. At $5 a board, why not! The documentation is still spotty, but the wider community (such as here) have gone along way towards filling the gaps.
I have had some success developing custom firmware using a Windows toolchain. I’ve also been working with the Spark Core and soon, the Spark Photon – they seem to be the ‘Arduinos’ of wifi-enabled controllers, and Spark has provided a lot of tools and support, so they might be a preferred starting point for those with less experience.
I was doing a little research, I tested my esp8266 to draw 70mA on it’s own (can probably save a few mA removing the tiny LED) a pro mini is probably about 50mA, can probably utilize sleep and have an interrupt wake it up when there is a client present on esp8266 (will be running in AP mode). Regarding car battery I’ve found info that it is 44Ah but that’s at 12 so for a 5v load I should deff have enough for my setup. I also thought about adding a switch to the whole setup to only turn it on when it’s cold weather and have the whole system disengaged during the summer months. Cnlohr asked “I don’t really understand what about this would apply to the 8051?
” in response to my post which was responding to Jack. The 8051 is a simple inexpensive processor & the toolstick by silabs is a product that builds on the 8051 generic parts with a lot more IO options such as crossbar. Cnlohr went on to ask “I don’t understand why you wouldn’t just make the ESP do whatever the 8051 was doing?” fair question if the task was simple & you had sufficient time.
There are a couple of unclear issues using the ESP embedded processor as the wifi does require program overhead thus takes processing away from your inserted application. Overall its far quicker to not mess with any of the internal structures assuming the programmers have well documented the CPU. its s/w interface os etc within the ESP and in any case cannot necessarily warrant or even guarantee a professional process as your application has to work in conjunction with however the ESP operating system is configured. If the documentation were improved then such resistance lessens.
Engineers tend to want to avoid those unclear issues as it can also touch on IP too & also if you are already fully conversant with another processor such as 8051, 68HC11 etc then the time to market is far reduced than having to otherwise interface your application into the ESP embedded processor and in any case depends on the size of your data set which may include substantial ascii or html generation overhead. OTOH if the application is simple & not part of a commercial development process that involves any public co capital risk then sure its worth exploring but, when you have investors capital at stake then as a bridge to proof of concept its economically more viable (time & $) to interface to an existing processor & especially so if the already has stock & resident expertise etc:-).
It’s only been a few months since the ESP8266 rolled out of some factory in China, and already the community is moving from simply getting custom firmware to work on the device to making the development tools easy to use. That’s huge – the barrier to entry is lowered, getting even more people on board with this very cool Internet of Things thing. While the majority of the community is settling on using the Lua interpreter firmware, there’s still the matter of getting this firmware uploaded to the ESP. Peter Jennings of Microchess fame to upload firmware to the ESP via a serial interface. There’s not much to it, but this will allow you to upload, set the WiFi credentials, toggle GPIO pins, and give you the ability to write a little bit of Lua in the same window.
If you’re looking for something that isn’t designed exclusively for Windows, there’s an alternative firmware flasher. This flasher also connects the ESP8266 to a network and uploads firmware. It’s a stripped-down programmer without a serial terminal or the ability to toggle pins, but there are plans for making this programmer cross-platform. Posted in, Tagged, Post navigation.