TK introduces us to the ESP-01 modules and shows us how to get started with a simple serial adapter and and the Arduino IDE. You will be up and running in less than an evening.

Despite a wealth of tutorials for setting up and writing code for the ESP8266 WiFi module, there has not been much of anything on programming this cheap wireless module with the Arduino IDE ...

A community of software and hardware hackers set to work, resulting in a variety of routes into development including the required add-ons to use the ever-popular Arduino framework.