ESP8266 questions

Community Projects
1

Hey gang-

I’m new to the ESP8266 module… and have some questions, I’m hoping can clear up some things for me.

Goal:

Connect -directly- to ESP module using (cell phone, tablet,…whatever). I do not want to connect to local wi-fi using ssid/pass, then navigate to some dynamically provided IP for the ESP. I want to connect -directly- to it…

*** I believe this means I need to configure it as a an access point? (correct?)

Reading this:

https://www.hackster.io/rayburne/esp826 … 6&offset=2

*** This seems to be VERY close to what I want.

Once connected directly to the ESP… I want to serve up a hosted webpage…

*** Again… this seems to also be included in the tutorial link above.

Here is what I can NOT grasp yet. I want this webpage to have some links/buttons on it… that when clicked (form submitted,…whatever) that is posts (get?) back to itself and parses out a query param (ie: ?command=1 …etc)

This parsed query param… will then be sent to a connected Arduino via serial.

At this point… we can forget the connected Arduino portion.

Questions:

What needs to be done in the tutorial above to have some links on the page (I’m not asking for the HTML portion) :)… that went clicked posts this data/query/url data back to the ESP to be parsed out?

I guess I am little confused on many of the terms being throw around…

AP (Access Point) vs Server vs Client.

A client would reach out/connect to some IP to get some data returned… correct?

So what is the difference between an AP configuration and SERVER configuration? (outside of the directly being able to connect to an AP state without local wi-fi/network connection)…

I’m not clear if some sort of ‘web server’ stuff needs to be added/configured so the page can post back to itself and grab some info from the query string?

Another question, what is meant when the term “softAP” is used?

thanks!

-xl

2

(sigh)

hopefully not another lost thread…

3

Yep.

Look at the Members and compare them to the post count numbers.

Something like 33000+ “members”.

Only 100 or so with any post count that could be halfway considered useful.

As far as your question, and the overwhelming vast majority of questions asked on this forum, Google, Google, oh, and try Google.

Anything and everything you’ve ever wanted to do with the ESP8266 is already documented…procedures, processes, everything…

4

An Access Point offers a wireless connection to Clients. The clients connect to the AP, which then often routes the traffic to the internet. An AP by itself does nothing but offer a wireless connection to itself. If it doesn’t have a router or server function running on it as well, then it will not be useful. A client is something like a laptop or a smartphone.

A server serves up content of some kind. This could be a website or an ftp server for example.

You want to run both an AP and a server on your ESP8266. There are examples included in the ESP8266 library.

The other things you want to do are html questions, and not specifically related to the ESP8266.

5

I got the whole thing sorted out a while back…

and have my project running. (captive portal with ‘GUI’ that posts to itself and handles and data/commands, and send it out to an Arduino Pro-Micro that (acting as a USB HID device does the matching keyboard/mouse action)