In this video, you’ll learn how to do over-the-air (OTA) updates to your ESP32 or ESP8266 NodeMCU boards using the AsyncElegantOTA library. You can use Arduino IDE or VS Code with PlatformIO IDE. The Async Elegant OTA library creates a web server that allows you to update new firmware (a new sketch) to your board without the need to make a serial connection between the ESP32/ESP8266 and your computer.

Additionally, with this library you can also upload new files to the ESP filesystem (SPIFFS or LittleFS). The library is very easy to use and it’s compatible with the ESPAsyncWebServer library that we use often to build web server projects.

While it’s possible to perform OTA firmware update of ESP8266 with platformIO, Jochen wanted a standalone program to update the firmware of his ESP8266 based devices, and since he could not find any that satisfied his needs, he decided to write his own ESP8266 standalone OTA update tool: BitBumper ESP8266 Flash.

The tools work in the local network or over the Internet, and the firmware needs to support PlatformIO OTA update mechanism

If your ESP8266 device is already running such firmware, you just need to load the new firmware in the program, input the IP address and port, and click flash.

e shared FlashEsp8266.exe tools for Windows as a freeware program, as well as user and developer documentation

http://1st.bitbumper.de/ota-firmware-update-tool-for-esp8266/

Adafruit CircuitPython is an open source derivative of MicroPython for use on educational development boards designed and sold by Adafruit.

CircuitPython, a MicroPython derivative, implements Python 3.x on microcontrollers such as the SAMD21 and ESP8266.

In a recent post, I talked about using the “Blue Pill” STM32 module with the Arduino IDE. I’m not a big fan of the Arduino IDE, but I will admit it is simple to use which makes it good for simple things.

It turns out, the Arduino IDE does a lot more than providing a bare-bones editor and launching a few command line tools. It also manages a very convoluted build process. The build process joins a lot of your files together, adds headers based on what it thinks you are doing, and generally compiles one big file, unless you’ve expressly included .cpp or .c files in your build.

That means just copying your normal Arduino code (I hate to say sketch) doesn’t give you anything you can build with a normal compiler. While there are plenty of makefile-based solutions, there’s also a tool called PlatformIO that purports to be a general-purpose solution for building on lots of embedded platforms, including Arduino.

Although PlatformIO claims to be an IDE, it really is a plugin for the open source Atom editor. However, it also has plugins for a lot of other IDEs. Interestingly enough, it even supports emacs. I know not everyone appreciates emacs, so I decided to investigate some of the other options. I’m not talking about VIM, either.

I wound up experimenting with two IDEs: Atom and Microsoft Visual Studio Code.

PlatformIO supports a staggering number of boards ranging from Arduino to ESP82666 to mBed boards to Raspberry Pi. It also supports different frameworks and IDEs. If you are like me and just like to be at the command line, you can use PlatformIO Core which is command line-driven.

PlatformIO does too much. In theory, that’s the strength of it. I can write my code and not care how the mBed libraries are written or the Arduino tools munge my source code. I don’t even have to set up a tool chain because PlatformIO downloads everything I need the first time I use it.

When that works it is really great. The problem is when it doesn’t.

http://platformio.org/

Simple step-by-step instruction of programming ESP8266 from AI-Thinker ESP-12E using Linux and Platformio.

Why

I was googling for a while how to do programming of this variant, and this setup seems to work. I used Platformio for the first time and it was really good experience. Zero hassle, and it just worked. On top of that, i got to use my preferred editor rather than the Arduino IDE.

Forth is one of those interesting languages that has a cult-like following. If you’ve never looked into it, its strength is that it is dead simple to put on most CPUs, yet it is very powerful and productive. There are two main principles that make this possible. First, parsing is easy because any sequence of non-space characters makes up a legitimate Forth word. So while words like “double” and “solve” are legal Forth words, so is “#$#” if that’s what you want to define.

The other thing that makes Forth both simple and powerful is that it is stack-based.

[Zeroflag] created PunyForth–a Forth-like language for the ESP8266. You can also run PunyForth for cross development purposes on Linux (including the Raspberry Pi). The system isn’t quite proper Forth, but it is close enough that if you know Forth, you’ll have no trouble.

Forth inspired programming language for the ESP8266
https://github.com/zeroflag/punyforth