Chapter 1, Configuring the ESP8266, will be about getting started with the ESP8266, and learning how to configure the ESP8266 and all the hardware/software components that you need to use it.

Chapter 2, Your First ESP8266 Projects, will be about learning how to make your first simple projects with the ESP8266.

Chapter 3, More ESP8266 Functions, will be about learning advanced functions of the ESP8266, as using the file storage system.

Chapter 4, Using MicroPython on the ESP8266, will be focused on using the powerful & simple MicroPython language to build projects with the ESP8266.

Chapter 5, Cloud Data Monitoring, will be about connecting your ESP8266 to the cloud, in order to monitor your projects from anywhere in the world.

Chapter 6, Interacting with Web Services, will exploit the Wi-Fi connectivity of the ESP8266 to connect to existing Web services, such as IFTTT or Google Drive.

Chapter 7, Machine to Machine Interactions, will be about building projects where ESP8266 boards communicate directly with each other via the cloud.

To build the projects you will find in this book, any experience with programming and/or electronics is of course appreciated, but you will be able to follow even if you have little experience in the field, as we will start from the absolute basics of the ESP8266.

This book is for people who want to build their own Internet of Things projects, using the ESP8266 as the platform to easily build those projects.

It is also for people already building IoT projects, for example with Arduino, and those who want to discover another platform to build IoT projects.

In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it, How it works, There's more, and See also).

To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, we use these sections as follows:

In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We will configure pin 5 as an input and then read it using the digitalRead() function and display the state of the input signal on the serial monitor."

A block of code is set as follows:

// LED pin
int inputPin = 5;
int val = 0;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  pinMode(inputPin, INPUT);
}

void loop() {
  
  // read pin
  val = digitalRead(inputPin);
 
  // display state of input pin  
  Serial.println(val);                              
  delay(1000);             
}

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

esptool.py --port /dev/ttyUSB0 --baud 460800 write_flash --flash_size=detect 0 esp8266-2016-05-03-v1.8.bin

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "The .bin files for the MicroPython port for ESP8266 are under the Firmware for ESP8266 boards sub heading."

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