Using micropython on a esp8266 to create a served webpage. Navigating to certain endpoints sends buffered commands over i2c interface to a IR enabled arduino.

Setup

Setup is done on MacOS 10.15 Beta (19A487m)

Flashing the chip with micropython

We need to start by flashing micropython to our esp8266. Download micropython from http://micropython.org/download#esp8266.

Next we need to install esptool from espressif. This is a python-based, platform independent, utility to communicate with the ORM bootloader in the Espressif ESP8266 & ESP32 chips. There might be other great tools for flashing these chips out there aswell. Check out their github page for updated installation instructions.

Now we can flash our chip with the downloaded binary file. First find your esp chip:

$ ls /dev/tty.usb*

I run esp8266 tool from the source files in a virtualenv, your command might veary slightly:

$ env/bin/python3 esptool.py -p /dev/tty.usbserial-1420 write_flash -z 0x0000 ~/firmware-combined.bin

Note the tty.usbserial-1420 device name and the path ../firmware-combined.bin for the micropython binary.

Install

Requirements:

ampy https://github.com/pycampers/ampy / pip install adafruit-ampy

Transfer boot script:

$ ampy -p /dev/tty.usbserial-1420 put boot.py

Again note the tty.usbeserial-1420 device name.

Configure

Temperary requirement - set PSID and password for network to connect to. Fill in the empty strings sta_if.connect('', '') on line 57 in boot.py.