One of the recommended products that came up recently for me on Amazon was a set of 2 Makerfocus ESP8266 NodeMCU boards for $15.99. I’m familiar with the chip from using the Adafruit Feather HUZZAH with ESP8266 WiFi that came with AdaBox003. That board runs for $16.95 though.
The reviews for these were good and any issues people had were resolved quickly by the seller. I figured it was worth the little bit of risk to try out these boards as a way to have some WiFi capabilities on hand. When they arrived, I ran a few quick tests in the Arduino IDE and had no problems uploading code or connecting to Adafruit IO with some of the example programs. The boards are slightly wider than the Feathers I’m used to working with, so there is just a single row of holes on either side when plugged into a breadboard. One other difference is no JST connector for a Lithium Ion battery.
If you’re looking for a cheap intro to Arduino or a way to get an electronics project on your network, check out these microcontrollers.
Nick Momrik 
I’ve played with them a bit, but honestly — dollar for dollar, I *adore* the Wemos D1 Minis.
https://wemoscc.aliexpress.com/store/1331105
They’re built off the same ESP-8266 module, but if you plug them into a standard breadboard, you’ll have one row of pins on either side of it. And they’re only $4 for the official ones — you can get knockoffs for under $3 with free shipping.
Also, because of how they use their usb to serial chip onboard, you don’t ever need to hit the ‘flash’ button while resetting — it just handles it automatically for you.
Oh, and their shields are pretty handy — they even have some super cheap proto shields for wiring your own components up to.
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I’ll have to check those out!
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After reading this article I was able to put control my Glade Automatic Spray with WiFi in just over an hour using the esp-01 esp8266.
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Hi Nick – I bought the same two Makerfocus ESP-8266 boards having worked with the Adafruit Huzzah in the past. However I cannot get it to program even the simple ‘Blink’ sketch. What board did you select in the Arduino board manager? Did you have to load an Arduino core to the board first? I believe it comes with LUA loaded. Also no lights show and the method to get it into the load mode seems different to the Huzzah.
Thanks.
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Did you install the drivers and set everything up? There are various guides around. I don’t remember which one I followed, but here is one example.
http://www.instructables.com/id/Programming-the-ESP8266-12E-using-Arduino-software/
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