Esp8266 is WiFi enabled microprocessor chip module , mainly used to add WiFi compatibility to your blog. There are two chips on module, first one is esp8266 (microprocessor datasheet ) and other is external serial rom ( this chip may vary with manufacturer ).There are many variants of esp8266 module available in market as shown below.
Out of this variants esp8266-01 is most common in practice & advisable for beginners. There are 8 pins in module as shown in figure. The module works on 3.3V logic level. Every module is preloaded with AT firmware This firmware provides user to interface with module using UART serial protocols. Their are set of At commands( AT commands are nothing but commands like Linux commands) that allows you to interact with controller & perform tasks like connect to WiFi, send bytes to server, receive message from server, and other functions. list of AT commands can be found here. You can also upgrade AT firmware version or create your own firmware and load it with help of tools provided by expressif (manufacturer of esp8266)
There are many ways to start working with module. Some of them are :-
- Interfacing with serial terminal using USB to UART bridge & provide commands from terminal.
- Using arduino ide to program esp8266 in arduino's library function.
- Upload lua firmware and program esp8266 in lua script.
From the above ways using arduino ide is most popular way to work with esp.
