SparkFun ESP8266 Thing

Caution

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Tip

When using this board with RIOT, set the BOARD variable to esp8266-sparkfun-thing in your Makefile. If you follow the standard RIOT project structure, your Makefile should look like this:

./Makefile

# name of your application
APPLICATION = hello-world

# Change this to your board if you want to build for a different board
BOARD ?= esp8266-sparkfun-thing

# This has to be the absolute path to the RIOT base directory:
RIOTBASE ?= $(CURDIR)/RIOT

include $(RIOTBASE)/Makefile.include

Support for the SparkFun ESP8266 Thing modules.

Overview

The SparkFun ESP8266 Thing and SparkFun ESP8266 Thing DEV are low-cost and easy to use breakout and development boards for the ESP8266. Both SparkFun ESP8266 Thing boards are relatively simple boards. The pins are simply broken out to two parallel, breadboard-compatible rows.

Hardware

MCU

Most features of the board are provided by the ESP8266EX SoC.

MCU	ESP8266EX
Family	Tensilica Xtensa LX106
Vendor	Espressif
RAM	80 kByte
Flash	512 kByte
Frequency	80 / 160 MHz
FPU	no
Timers	1 x 32 bit
ADCs	1 x 10 bit (1 channel)
LEDs	1 x GPIO1
I2Cs	2 (software implementation)
SPIs	1
UARTs	1 (console)
WiFi	built in
Vcc	2.5 - 3.6 V
Datasheet	Datasheet
Technical Reference	Technical Reference
Board Schematic	ESP8266 Thing\n ESP8266 Thing Dev

Board Versions

Although the board definition works with both boards, it’s important to know that they differ slightly in some features:

Feature	ESP8266 Thing	ESP8266 Thing Dev
USB to Serial adapter on-board	no	yes
I2C pull-up resistors on-board	yes (jumpable)	no [1]
Programming interface	FTDI USB to Serial adapter	USB
Reset/Flash/Boot logic	FTDI	USB
Battery connector	yes	no (can be retrofitted)
LiPo Charger on-board	yes	no
LED (GPIO5)	high active	low active [2]
GPIO15 broken out	no	yes
CHIP_EN broken out	yes	no

[1] Although the SparkFun ESP8266 Thing Dev has no on-board I2C pull-up resistors, the I2C interface can be used because the ESP8266 SoC has built-in pull-up resistors that are activated by the I2C peripheral driver.

[2] The board configuration defines high-active LEDs. If the SparkFun ESP8266 Thing Dev is used with this board configuration, the LED outputs must be inverted by the application.

RIOT Pin Mapping

The following figures show the mapping of these pin holes to RIOT pins.

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Flash SPI pins including GPIO9 and GPIO10 are not broken out. The SparkFun Thing board has solder pads for these pins at the bottom layer.

Flashing the Device

To flash the RIOT image, the device has to be connected to the host computer. Since the SparkFun Thing Dev board has an USB to Serial adapter on board, this can done directly using the Micro USB. SparkFun Thin board has to be connected to the host computer using the FTDI interface and a FTDI USB to Serial adapter/cable. For more information on how to program the SparkFun Thing board, please refer the ESP8266 Thing Hookup Guide.

Note: Please make sure the FTDI USB to Serial adapter/cable uses 3.3 V.

Both boards have a reset/flash/boot logic on-board so that flashing is quite simple. To flash the RIOT image just type:

make flash BOARD=esp8266-sparkfun-thing ...

For detailed information about ESP8266 as well as configuring and compiling RIOT for ESP8266 boards, see esp8266_riot.