nodemcu-thingy

THIS PACKAGE IS CURRENTLY UNDER DEVOLOPMENT AND TO BE CONSIDERED ALPHA

NodeMCU Thingy is an atom package for "over the air" development on the NodeMCU platform. It uses a websocket connection to the esp8266 for communication, so in an ideal world the USB cable should be needed only to upload the basic firmware and the initial websocket server to the NodeMCU.

Features include:

Upload of files to the NodeMCU
Download of files from the NodeMCU
Deletion of files on the NodeMCU
Interactive Console

demo

Setup

Get the firmware

Flash your esp8266 with a current NodeMCU firmware. I recommend using a firmware built with Marcel Stoer's excellent online tool at https://nodemcu-build.com/

Select branch master and at least the following 9 modules:

bit
crypto
file
gpio
net
node
tmr
uart
wifi

Note that bit and crypto are not selected by default.

This creates two versions of the firmware: integer and float. If you do not know which one to use, the integer version is probably ok for you.

Flash the firmware

Download esptool.py from https://github.com/espressif/esptool.

Flash the firmware to the esp8266 with (use the appropriate --port parameter)

esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 erase_flash
esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 write_flash -fm dio 0x00000 nodemcu-master*.bin

which should produce an output like:

esptool.py v1.3-dev
Connecting...
Running Cesanta flasher stub...
Erasing flash (this may take a while)...
Erase took 6.6 seconds

esptool.py v1.3-dev
Connecting...
Auto-detected Flash size: 32m
Running Cesanta flasher stub...
Flash params set to 0x0240
Writing 401408 @ 0x0... 401408 (100 %)
Wrote 401408 bytes at 0x0 in 34.8 seconds (92.3 kbit/s)...
Leaving...

Give it a few seconds to reboot.

Install websocket server

Cd to .atom/packages/nodemcu-thingy/mcu/. Change init.lua to match your wireless LAN.

station_cfg.ssid="your ssid"
station_cfg.pwd="yout wifi password"
wifi.sta.sethostname("your hostname for the esp8266")

Edit upload.sh and check if the --port value matches your system and execute bash upload.sh.

This takes some time and you should see a lot of lines like

->file.writeline([==[end]==]) -> ok

ending in

->file.flush() -> ok
->file.close() -> ok
--->>> All done <<<---

Restart the esp8266 by pressing the RST button on the esp8266.

After a few seconds you should be able to ping the esp8266 using the value from wifi.sta.sethostname()

Configure package nodemcu-thingy

Open Atom's preferences screen (Edit->Preferences or Ctrl-,). Open Packages. Find package nodemcu-thingy and click Settings. Enter the ip address or hostname of your esp8266 (value from wifi.sta.sethostname()) into the host field.

Activate the package with Packages->nodemcu-thingy->Toggle

Click Connect. If everything worked the red Disconnected changes to a green Connected after a few seconds.

demo

You are now good to go. Very brave programmers can now unhook the usb cable from the computer and run the esp8266 on some other power source (probably a phone charger).

Use package nodemcu-thingy

You can upload, download, erase files on the esp8266.

The installation process has installed 3 files on the esp8266 which are protected from modification by this package:

websocket.lc implements the websocket protocol
main.lc implements the server side functions for this package
init.lua called by the NodeMCU firmware on startup.
sets up the wifi connection
starts the websocket server
calls userinit.lua if present.

(The original implementation of these 3 files is borrowed from nodemcu-webide)

To implement your own functionality upload a custom userinit.lua to start your own custom code.

demo

See https://nodemcu.readthedocs.io/en/master/ for the all the good stuff you can use...

Credits

The Websocket server on the NodeMCU is a slightly modified version of the one in Creationix's nodemcu-webide

The Python luatool comes from 4ref0nt@gmail.com (http://esp8266.ru)