6-27-2018
Ditch the Wifi and SDK on the ESP8266
Perhaps like me you have written a little 10 line C program that
prints "hello world" and wondered why it takes many seconds to download
some immense image. Well, it is because the standard SDK is linking in
everything including the kitchen sink, Wifi libraries, and who knows
what else. It is possible to ditch all of that and write code that
runs right on top of the bootrom. If you do so, you will be gratified
to find that your code loads in a fraction of a second.
On June 27, 2018, a Hackaday article featured a project that used the ESP8266 just for the
sake of using it as an inexpensive and very capable microcontroller.
Something I have done with complete satisfaction for several projects.
The basic engine article claims that people have run the ESP8266 at 378 Mhz, which sounds
incredible. I am willing to bet it was for the sake of doing so, and I am loathe the
overclock like that for a real project because I dislike flakey and unstable behavior.
Overclocking is always on (or beyond) the threshold of unstable behavior, and that
just wastes my time and frustrates me. So I avoid it. But I could be wrong.
Feedback? Questions?
Drop me a line!
Tom's Computer Info / tom@mmto.org