It is common today to dismiss the ESP8266 as old hat – much as I like the ESP32, I’ve read umpteen articles extolling the virtues of the ESP32 for projects that simply don’t need the ESP32.
Lets knock a couple of incorrect notions on the head… firstly “the ESP8266 is dead” – erm, no. Depending on where you live, 2.20 Euros (or equivalent) each, including postage from AliExpress for example. Secondly, speed – oft-quoted as “only” running at 80Mhz. Erm, not necessarily. See below..
Well, I’m sitting in front of an ESP8266 board right now running WLED…. at 160Mhz with virtually no significant heat/power overhead for the extra speed, The WLED Web Installer offers this install option and has done for a long time.
My own now-well-and-truly-defunct ESP-GO firmware for ESP8266 offered a single command, years ago, to double the speed from 80Mhz to 160Mhz. I would not be surprised if other packages do the same though I believe you have to do a custom compile to get that in Tasmota.
No Bluetooth… SO? I find Bluetooth to be handy on the odd occasion but also find it’s limited range to be frustrating, hence my preference for WiFi and Zigbee which will be apparent elsewhere in the blog.
Over at the INSTALL WLED page you’ll see the option to use the “ESP8266 Frequency test” – it’s been there for a long time – see the CPU clock speed on the WLED info page below.
Just remember that for example on many ESP8266 boards, when you come to FLASH, hold in the RST button and programming button (GPIO0 to GND), release RST then start programming at which point you can release the other button. That doesn’t apply to all boards. The flashing here is done initially by a cheap FTDI on a serial port on the PC. Subsequent updates can be done wirelessly.
As for speed, if anyone has any doubts, here’s the info page from WLED – I just flashed a board which is running as I type this…
And here’s the board running 8 LEDS in a very smooth rainbow – the only reason I’m only running 8 is that the LED strip has suffered water damage (my fault – Spain is dry so often I keep forgetting to use waterproof LED strip outside and when it does rain – it pours complete with Saharan dust). I routinely run several hundreds of LEDS on a strip around our pergola and elsewhere.
As for voltage – the ESP8266 board is running off 5V and I’m running the WS2812B strip from 5V also. I don’t use any special voltage logic switching – I’m coming straight off the ESP8266 D4 pin (GPIO2) to the WS2812B and in several years and MANY WLED and other ESP8266 projects, this has never caused any issues. Have I been lucky?
Note the setting here in WLED CONFIG for RGB colour order is GRB.
I also have a 3D display (Merry Christmas etc.) which again runs perfectly using the ESP8266 – I often use the IR version of the firmware which can use an infra-red sensor for IR remote control though I’m far more likely to control WLED in Home Assistant from my phone. Coding for the latter is quite simple. Again I’ve not felt the need to use an ESP32 on any such installation. However, as the price of the ESP32S3 drops, I’m using that for more projects – I particularly like the built-in single RGB LED on the ESP32-S3 and -C6 boards. Anyway, just a reminder for those who’ve bought into the idea that the ESP8266 is dead – far from it.
Ok you’ve talked me into it – a VERY short video of 204 LEDS running the RAINBOW option in WLED on a standard PC USB output – I love it and use WLED with Rainbow and “Washing machine” all over the place.
My suite of 8266s with SHT31s are still doing sterling service after 8?9?10? years.
Some of mine are many years old and running fine – the point is – the ESP8266 is readily available and even cheaper than the ESP32 – and you can do lots with it as long as you don’t need BT. In the majority of cases – for commercial products such as smart switches and smart bulbs etc, the BT is only used in initial setup anyway to make setup marginally easier.