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Arduino Project Handbook
The Arduino is a small, inexpensive computer that can be programmed to control endless creations limited only by your imagination. As you’ll soon see, the Arduino can be used to make a whole host of projects, like a ghost detector, joystick-controlled laser, electronic die, laser trip wire alarm, motion sensor alarm, keypad entry system, and many others. All of these projects are easy to build and have one thing in common—they use the power of the Arduino. In the early 1980s, I picked up a great Penguin paperback titled something like Gadgets and Gizmos, hidden away in a local bookstore. The projects were simple ones like making a working lighthouse using flashlight bulbs and building a revolving display table using an old clock. The ideas in that book sparked my imagination, and I’ve been creating ever since.
A Beginer Guide to ESP8266
There are different ways to program the ESP8266, but I'll only cover the method using the Arduino IDE. This is really easy for beginners, and it's a very familiar environment if you've used Arduino boards before. Just keep in mind that it's not limited to this option: there's also an official SDK available to program it in real C, this is very useful if you want to optimize your code or do some advanced tricks that aren't supported by the Arduino IDE. Another possibility is to flash it with a LUA interpreter, so you can upload and run LUA scripts. Or maybe you're more familiar with Python? Then you should check out the MicroPython firmware to interpret MicroPython scripts. I'm sure there's other languages available as well, so just do a quick Google search and write your code in the language of your choice.
Beginner Guide to ESP
There are different ways to program the ESP8266, but I'll only cover the method using the Arduino IDE. This is really easy for beginners, and it's a very familiar environment if you've used Arduino boards before. Just keep in mind that it's not limited to this option: there's also an official SDK available to program it in real C, this is very useful if you want to optimize your code or do some advanced tricks that aren't supported by the Arduino IDE. Another possibility is to flash it with a LUA interpreter, so you can upload and run LUA scripts. Or maybe you're more familiar with Python? Then you should check out the MicroPython firmware to interpret MicroPython scripts. I'm sure there's other languages available as well, so just do a quick Google search and write your code in the language of your choice