B4R Tutorial Solder ESP8266 ESP-12F to an adapter plate

So you have an ESP-12F and want to use it in a project, well I find that the best way for my home projects is to use an 12x adaptor plate. I have a number of ESP-12F projects running throughout my home and thought that I would share the boards that I use with the forum.

The next tutorial is how I wire this adaptor plate to program the ESP-12F.

WiFi - ESP8266 ESP-12F.

Tin the ESP-12F adaptor plate with solder, then solder the ESP-12F into it.

Place 2 female headers into a breadboard, place the adaptor plate onto the headers then solder the pins into place.

This is what the adaptor plate looks like with the headers and ESP-12F soldered in place.

Testing the completed board. The blue LED is the ESP-12F running the blink sketch.

Enjoy...

 

[Cableguy]

If you can get you hand on the adapter board schematics (most of it is just pin relocation) then you could create in circuit PCB solution to it, or at least create your own narrower adaptor board.
One of the things I like in my wemos D1 is that, in a 10 pin wide Breadboard, I get one 1pin wide in each side free for jumper connections

 

[Peter Simpson]

I do like your idea about the narrower breakout board @Cableguy, I'll look into designing and creating some via the toner method. The 2 x 10kΩ resistors are there purely for extra protection, cheers.

I always develop on WeMos D1 Mini's (connected to a breadboard) before transferring over to these breakout boards. Once my projects are complete, I no longer need to use the USB to UART, and I'm a firm believer that the less components on a board, the less chance of the board failing in the future, which in this case is true

Below is V1 of my actual breakout programming board. In the near future I will be making a V2 board for a narrower EPS-12F breakout. V2 will have a reset button and GPIO5 to constant ground instead of it being on the button, only GPIO0 will be on the button. V2 will be built on a vero stripboard instead of a vero dotboard so it will look tidier, I will also colour coordinate the wires to the wire colours in my first post, I might also change the SMD button for a slim TH button. V1 works perfect as it is already, but the above mentioned changes will make for easier use.

Top view of my home made breakout programming board.
I decided to add 2 rows of headers so that I can test external devices with jumper cables if necessary (relays, IR receivers, general sensors etc). The header pins for programming the ESP-12F are connected to a CP12102 Micro USB to UART TTL module, two of the header pins are grounded to the CP12102 via the SMD PTM button under the board. Yellow is TX and RX, red is VCC and black is ground.

Bottom view.
To program the ESP-12F all I have to do is press the button on the bottom of the board whilst supplying power to the board, it's now ready to flash up. Hmm, maybe I should have cleaned off the extra flux

Breakout board sitting in my programming board.
As you can see I enjoy building small projects. You can clearly see the extra side headers in the photo below. I always develop on a WeMos D1 Mini. Once I finish on the D1 Mini, the code is transferred over and tested on an ESP-12F on a breakout board, then I just pull the breakout board out and place it in my house wherever it's needed.

I need to look into OTA updates. There are people on the net and a few YouTube videos on how it all works on an ESP8266, but it seems a bit over my head for now but maybe in the future I'll look more into it.

Enjoy...

 

[Peter Simpson]

Hello all,
Well I completely forgot that I said at the bottom of the post above that I would look into OTA (Over The Air) updating. Well last year I did look into it and here are the results of a couple of hours work.

https://www.b4x.com/android/forum/t...working-that-would-be-nice.81278/#post-515195

I still do a lot of B4R projects but nothing that can't be found on here already. I have a few projects in my mind that I have to turn into reality, when I do IllIbe creating new tutorials about them.

Enjoy...

 

[Cableguy]

did you get around to create a v2 of your programmer board using the stripboard?
I am about to start a project, still deciding on components, but I most certainly will go with a wemos, and am considering going from a dev board to the bare module on final prototype...

 

[Peter Simpson]

did you get around to create a v2 of your programmer board using the stripboard?
I am about to start a project, still deciding on components, but I most certainly will go with a wemos, and am considering going from a dev board to the bare module on final prototype...

Hello @Cableguy yes I did create V2 of my board.

Firstly sorry for the long delay in responding, I've been on holiday on our property in Jamaica, I've only just got back to the UK 3 days ago

Yes I created V2 and it works great. I've slowly been turning my house into a kind of mini smart home, maybe with the purpose of hopefully setting up a business doing that sort of thing for people, but that's not really easy to do, and that's why I have lots of different boards etc.

B4R has helped me to no end with creating lots of test programs for my ideas, especially for my house, AliExpress has also been of great help for ordering hardware.

One thing that I'm looking into is auto b's, I will not tell you exactly what that means on the open forum, but as a long standing member whome I've interacted previously with, I'll gladly tell you over PM if you ask me, it's extremely interesting and the code is basically already written, I just need to create and test the end solution.

I'll take a photo of my V2 board and I'll post the photo and description of it when I get a few minutes spare to do so.

Cheers...

 

[Johan Hormaza]

I have a few projects in my mind that I have to turn into reality, when I do IllIbe creating new tutorials about them.

I hope and be soon

 

[embedded]

I have made it my own plate..

 

[Peter Simpson]

I have made it my own plate..View attachment 68090

Nice...