We have several entries in the series on the ESP8266 presenting the popular SoC and the development boards that incorporate it. In this entry, we will see how to program the ESP8266 with the Arduino IDE.
Undoubtedly, being able to use the Arduino environment and all the tools it allows (IDEs, libraries, documentation…) has been a large part of the success of the ESP8266. A success that is largely due to the community and, later, has partial support from the manufacturer Espressif.
In this entry, we will see how to configure the standard Arduino IDE to program the ESP8266 and the boards based on this popular SoC, such as the usual NodeMCU and Wemos. Although we can also use any other compatible IDE like Arduino, Visual Studio Code, or Atom.
The process is only valid for the ESP8266 and not for its “big brother” the ESP32. For the ESP32, the process is detailed in this entry How to program ESP32 with the Arduino IDE
Install ESP8266 in Arduino IDE
Currently, configuring the Arduino environment to work with ESP8266 development boards is very simple, thanks to the support it has received from the community, which makes it available as a package that we can download and add to the board manager.
To program the development boards based on the ESP8266, we simply need to configure the package URL so that we can add them to the board manager of the Arduino IDE.
To do this, we access the configuration menu and in “Additional board manager URLs” we click on the small button on the right.
In the window that appears, we add the following URL.
http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.jsonIf we had other addresses, we leave each one of them on a new line.
Now we enter the board manager of the Arduino IDE.
We search for the package of development boards based on the ESP8266 and install it.
We now have the development boards based on the ESP8266 available to program them with the Arduino IDE. It’s that easy!
