Day 5 - Section 1 - Introduction to NodeMCU

What is NodeMCU?

The NodeMCU (Node MicroController Unit) is an open source software and hardware development environment that is built around a very inexpensive System-on-a-Chip (SoC) called the ESP8266. The ESP8266, designed and manufactured by Espressif Systems, contains all crucial elements of the modern computer: CPU, RAM, networking (wifi), and even a modern operating system and SDK. When purchased at bulk, the ESP8266 chip costs only $2 USD a piece. That makes it an excellent choice for IoT projects of all kinds.

Through its pins we can read inputs - light on a sensor, a finger on a button, or a Twitter message -and turn them into an output - activating a motor, turning on an LED, publishing something online. It has also WiFi capabilities, so we can control it wirelessly and make it work on a remote installation easily! We can tell our board what to do by sending a set of instructions to the microcontroller on the board. To do so we can use the the Arduino Software (IDE).