Introduction: Getting Started With ESP8266

By Abhinav Gandhi
About: Roboticist and Tinkerer. Passionate mentor to some and mentee to others. Learner for life.

The ESP8266 is a great way to connect your microcontrollers such as Arduino to a local network or the internet. However, the ESP8266 comes in a breakout which isn't breadboard friendly. To overcome this issue I've put together a short instructable on how to make a breakout for the ESP, to make it ready for prototyping.

Step 1: List of Materials, Tools and Equipment:

  1. ESP8266 module
  2. GPB
  3. Soldering Equipment
  4. Header pins (male & female)
  5. Wire (preferably single stranded)

Step 2: Step 1:

This step is fairly simple and doesn't require much explanation, check out the pictures for a better understanding.

Cut a small length of multi-cored wire.

Strip the ends and push them through the holes on ESP8266 module and start soldering one by one.

Repeat for opposite side.

Check out the pictures for more details.

Once you're done the module should like the one in the image.

Step 3: Step 2:

Its time to put the ESP on the GPB and make a decent breakout for it. Pick one of the corners of the GPB and solder a row of 8 male and female header pins in parallel.

Connect these to the loose end of the wires from the ESP module. Do the same for the second row of pins on the ESP.

Step 4: Step 4: You're All Done!

Your hardware prototyping platform is all done you can connect jumpers to the breadboard or arduino. The ESP8266 version 12 has some onboard memory and can be used as an arduino as well! I've left some additional space on the GPB to add relays to the board, and make some cool IOT applications out of it, stay tuned for more projects with this board!`