Review on 🔌 HiLetgo ESP8266 NodeMCU CP2102 ESP-12E Development Board: Ideal for Arduino IDE/Micropython; Large Size by Christopher Foreman

I finally got this board right. This may seem like many steps, but most of them are not difficult or time consuming. It takes 1 to 7 seconds to connect to my home WiFi network. Once connected to WiFi, it connects to my MQTT broker in less than 2 seconds. When I publish MQTT messages to my broker, there is no noticeable delay before this board responds. I connected it to the BMP280 sensor and checked the operation of the I2C pins. I tested it with a servo using the built in sample program Sweep.ino. The HiLetgo website has a page for this board, but there doesn't seem to be a link to a datasheet or even a pinout. I finally found the datasheet and pinout on Components101 dot com. They have a page called NodeMCU ESP8266 Pinout, Features, Specifications and Datasheet that includes both. If you don't see a COM port when connecting this device, you may need to install a driver for the CP2102 UART (the little square chip next to the micro USB port). This chip is made by Silicon Labs and they have a 210x driver download on their website. Install the "AdaFruit ESP8266" library in the Arduino IDE Library Manager (Extras -> Manage Libraries.). This will give you the ESP8266WiFi.h file that you will need for your sketches. #include <ESP8266WiFi.h>In the Arduino IDE settings, add a link to "package_esp8266com_index.json" which you can find on the web. Once you have done this you can select this board in the Board Manager. Once you've done all that, it should work like any official Arduino board.