These are my notes associated with the programming environment I use to program my Arduino based sensors, ESP8266 WiFi switches, etc.
I started with programming ESP8266 using the Espressif build environment running in a Windows VM on my Mac, but quickly moved to using the PlatformIO IDE initially with the Atom editor, but at my last rebuild moved over to the Visual Studio Code editor.
- Install VSCode for Mac (download)
- Install PlatformIO IDE as a VSCode extension (guide):
- Open VSCode Extension Manager
- Search for PlatformIO IDE extension
- Install PlatformIO IDE
- Press Home button on bottom bar, then create new or import projects
- If new, select board “NodeMCU”, folder for project and name
- For NodeMCU need to download and install the USB driver to support the Silicon Labs USB to Serial chip
- Having tried several serial interface utilities I ended up with CoolTerm which I find works very well for me. After using this for some time, now tend to just use the terminal built into PlatformIO