Product Description

NodeMCU is an open source IoT platform. It uses the Lua scripting language. The eLua project is the basis of the nodeMCU boards. The NodeMCU is built on the ESP8266 SDK 1.4. It uses many open source projects, such as Lua-cjson, and spiffs. It includes firmware which runs on the ESP8266 Wi-Fi SoC and hardware which is based on the ESP-12 module.

The NodeMCU board itself adds a USB/UART converter chip, an LDO power supply with proper decoupling (at last!), plus 2 miniature push buttons and what is the most important feature probably: it breaks out all ESP8266 pins to breadboard-compatible 2.54 mm pitch headers.

As the NodeMCU board uses the  CH340G USB/UART converter chip you will need to download and install the proper driver to get going with the development. You can find the drivers here:

NodeMCU CH340/CH340G Driver Download page (if not automatically recognized): Click Here For MAC users please check this link .

Once you install the driver you can obtain the assigned serial COM port number via the device manager (available in the control panel). It should be possible to connect via this COM port to the LUA interpreter running on the ESP8266 using your favorite terminal emulator program. The most common configuration is for 9600 baud (1 start bit, 8 data bits, no parity).

An easy way to communicate with the LUA interpreter on the ESP8266 is by using the ESP8266 LuaLoader. Also, it allows you to perform simple tasks (like setting the SSID and password for your wireless router so it can connect to you network) via a GUI. You can also read out or set the status of its GPIO ports, furthermore, obtain information like the IP address or the chipID, or upload files. However, you can as well try ESPlorer which has a more contemporary user interface and has syntax highlighting on LUA code.

Finally, you can find some usage examples here to start your development activities.

NodeMCU Features

• Arduino-Like Hardware IO
• Code like Arduino, but interactively in Lua script
• Event-driven API for network applications, which facilitates developers writing code
• Integrates GPIO, PWM, IIC, 1-Wire and ADC all in one board
• 10 GPIO, every GPIO can be PWM, I2C, 1-wire
• 4M Flash Memory
• Built-in WiFi Antenna