Installing the Arduino IDE for the ESP8266

Now that we have completely set up the hardware for the ESP8266, we are ready to configure it using the Arduino IDE.

The most basic way to use the ESP8266 module is to use serial commands, as the chip is basically a Wi-Fi/Serial transceiver. However, this is not convenient and this is not what I recommend doing.

What I recommend is simply using the Arduino IDE, which you will need to install on your computer. This makes it very convenient to use the ESP8266 chip, as we will be using the well-known Arduino IDE, so this is the method that we will use in the entire book.

We are now going to configure your ESP8266 chip using the Arduino IDE. This is a great way to use the chip, as you will be able to program it using the well-known Arduino IDE and also re-use several existing Arduino libraries.

If this is not done yet, install the latest version of the Arduino IDE. You can get it from http://www.arduino.cc/en/main/software.

Now, you need to take a follow steps to be able to configure the ESP8266 with the Arduino IDE:

1. Start the Arduino IDE and open the Preferences window.
2. Enter the following URL into the Additional Board Manager URLs field: http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json
3. Open Boards Manager from the Tools | Board menu and install the esp8266 platform as shown here: