2 thoughts on “Comparison of ESP8266 NodeMCU development boards • my2cents”
All these numbers of boards, versions, etc, of the same thing make the thing difficult. It is not like the Arduino which any board, and version of the same thing works well with the Arduino IDE or the software found at the Arduino.cc.
I have been trying to “Getting started with nodeMCU” and it have been very difficult, not impossible because I am still trying. But my intention of getting familiar with a platform other than Arduino seems to be difficult.
That is because by using Arduino based hardware you don’t learn to use a microcontroller but rather learn to use only what has been exposed through Arduino libraries which is a level of abstraction between the user and the microcontroller. To use a microcontroller you should read it’s datasheet and not Arduino board manual. For the example, by reading Arduino Uno manual you will not learn to use ATmega328 directly – that way you only learn to use a specific implementation based on that microcontroller. When you learn to use a microcontroller then it is easy to use it soldered onto another board with different connections. When using Arduino hardware + Arduino IDE without reading a microcontroller datasheet a lot of things remains hidden, that is why better approach is to learn using microcontrollers directly. Try with some AVR projects where you must code everything from scratch and then you will find using different ESP8266 boards very easy. Try blink.c + ATmega328 on a breadboard using only AVR Studio and ISP programming and you will be in the same situation as when using ESP8266 with some of the available boards.
All these numbers of boards, versions, etc, of the same thing make the thing difficult. It is not like the Arduino which any board, and version of the same thing works well with the Arduino IDE or the software found at the Arduino.cc.
I have been trying to “Getting started with nodeMCU” and it have been very difficult, not impossible because I am still trying. But my intention of getting familiar with a platform other than Arduino seems to be difficult.
That is because by using Arduino based hardware you don’t learn to use a microcontroller but rather learn to use only what has been exposed through Arduino libraries which is a level of abstraction between the user and the microcontroller. To use a microcontroller you should read it’s datasheet and not Arduino board manual. For the example, by reading Arduino Uno manual you will not learn to use ATmega328 directly – that way you only learn to use a specific implementation based on that microcontroller. When you learn to use a microcontroller then it is easy to use it soldered onto another board with different connections. When using Arduino hardware + Arduino IDE without reading a microcontroller datasheet a lot of things remains hidden, that is why better approach is to learn using microcontrollers directly. Try with some AVR projects where you must code everything from scratch and then you will find using different ESP8266 boards very easy. Try blink.c + ATmega328 on a breadboard using only AVR Studio and ISP programming and you will be in the same situation as when using ESP8266 with some of the available boards.