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Day 5 - Section 1 - Introduction to NodeMCU

Site: ΕΛ/ΛΑΚ Moodle
Course: Robotics - 3D Printing - Internet of Things
Book: Day 5 - Section 1 - Introduction to NodeMCU
Printed by: Guest user
Date: Sunday, 6 April 2025, 3:42 AM

Description

After the completion of this section the students will be able to:

  • state what is the NodeMCU board
  • describe and analyze the applications of NodeMCU board and ESP8266 chip
  • distinguish the basic elements of Arduino IDE
  • setup the Arduino IDE to their computers based on NodeMCU settings

Table of contents

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).

Arduino IDE settings based on NodeMCU setup

http://learn.robotgeek.com/images/tutorials/rgc/arduinoIDE.png

The Arduino Integrated Development Environment - or Arduino Software (IDE) - contains a text editor for writing code, a message area, a text console, a toolbar with buttons for common functions and a series of menus. It connects to the NodeMCU hardware to upload programs and communicate with them.

Assuming we have already installed the ESP8266 support on our Arduino IDE (following the instructions on Installing with Boards Manager ), we choose the right port from the Ports menu and the NodeMCU 1.0 (ESP-12E Module) from the Boards menu.