The ESP8266 Serial-to-WiFi adapter created by Espressif has seen a wide adoption as a cost-effective solution for IoT and WiFi-capable devices. This tiny-sized System On a Chip (SoC) includes an 80 MHz microcontroller with a full WiFi front-end (both as client and access point) as well as a full TCP/IP stack with DNS. Because the ESP8266 comes only in a Surface-Mount package, a few different vendors have developed modules labeled ESP-NN where NN are numbers ranging from 01 to 13 (at the time of this writing). Save for the first module, the ESP-01, these modules are also intended to be mounted on a PCB via castellated pins. Moreover, because the ESP8266 doesn't have a native USB interface, all ESP-NN modules need an external USB to Serial adapter (e.g., FTDI FT232 USB to Serial UART adapter) to receive code from a computer's USB connection.
The WeMos D1 Mini family of boards is one of the latest additions to the ESP8266-based Internet Of Things (IoT) ecosystem. With the ACROBOTIC WeMos ESP8266 D1 Mini Pro development board, everything needed to program the latest ESP8266 module (the ESP-12F) comes nicely packaged on a single board. Different than our D1 Mini V2, the D1 Mini Pro carries 16MB of Flash Memory as well as a connector for an external antenna.
Together with a growing set of expansion boards (shields), the WeMos family is a great solution for building projects quickly using the ESP8266 SoC.
Features:
- WCH CH340 USB to UART Bridge
- 11 Digital, 1 Analog GPIO (save for D0, every GPIO can be PWM, I2C (software), 1-wire)
- ESP-12F FCC certified Wi-Fi module (contains the ESP8266 IC)
- PCB-mounted antenna
- Onboard Micro-USB connector (i.e., USB Micro-B)
We have written useful guides for getting you started with the WeMos D1 Mini Pro development board:
- http://learn.acrobotic.com/tutorials/post/wemos-d1-mini-esp8266-getting-started
