The bare ESP8266 chip is cheap, but has non standard pin spacing, and isn’t easy to work with. There is a “Bread Board Friendly” breakout for it, but it has a couple of quirks.
1. It’s wide enough that it takes the outer rows of pins on a standard solderless breadboard, so you need to connect your wires underneath, then plug the breakout board on top. I’ll post a picture of this shortly.
2. Most descriptions for the board claim one of the included 10k ohm resistors (the right one) connect to GPIO2 (which would be wrong) when it’s actually connected to GPIO15 (which is correct).
3. The middle “0” ohm resistor is actually a jumper, and needs to be removed if attaching a 3.3v regulator on the back side.
3. I recommend a external 3.3v supply of 600ma or more. As mentioned above, a 3.3v regulator can be attached to the back side, but ….
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A number of resources claim the regulator is a LM31117-3.3v 800ma (and some adapter board dealers even include one). That part will not work, as pins 2 & 3 are reversed. You need a AP7215 (AP7215-33YG-13) 600ma 3.3v SOT-89 regulator. I do wish input and output capacitors (1uf is fine) would have been preinstalled on the board, or at least pads for them. Place one between pin 2 and gnd, and the other between pin 3 and gnd. Alternatively, you can use a external 3.3v regulator or module, as I am doing.
4. There are still a few more resistors you will have to add:
GPIO0 to VCC with a 10k ohm
RST to VCC with a 10k ohm
RST to Gnd through a momentary (reset button)
GPIO0 to Gnd through a momentary (program button) and a 470 ohm in series.
5. You will need a ttl serial programmer.
The good news is that it’s very easy to solder the ESP8266 to the adapter if you have a fine point soldering iron.
Additional references:
https://tttapa.github.io/ESP8266/Chap02%20-%20Hardware.html
https://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=6505
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