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.
Everyone, every day, uses technology. Most of us leave the programming to engineers because we think coding and electronics are complicated and difcult; actually, they can be fun and exciting activities. Thanks to Arduino, designers, artists, hobbyists and students of all ages are learning to create things that light up, move, and respond to people, animals, plants, and the rest of the world. Over the years Arduino has been used as the “brain” in thousands of projects, one more creative than the last. A worldwide community of makers has gathered around this open-source platform, moving from personal computing to personal fabrication, and contributing to a new world of participation, cooperation and sharing. Arduino is open and simple. It’s founded on lessons we’ve learned teaching our own classes: if you start with the assumption that learning to make digital technologies is simple and accessible, you can make it so. Suddenly electronics and code become creative tools that anyone can use – like brushes and paint. This book walks you through the basics in a hands-on way, with creative projects you build by learning. Once you’ve mastered the basics, you’ll have a palete of sofware and circuits that you can use to create something beautiful, and make someone smile with what you invent.
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