Configure Arduino IDE for ESP8266

Simplified steps as of of Arduino IDE 1.6.8 with ESP2866 library version 2.2.0-rc1 or greater

• Start Arduino (Note: Assuming version 1.6.8)
• Click 'Arduino' -> 'Preferences'
  • Additional Boards Manager URLs: http://arduino.esp8266.com/staging/package_esp8266com_index.json
• Restart Arduino IDE
• Click 'Tools' -> 'Board' -> 'Boards Manager'
  • Select 'Generic ESP8266 Module' # NOTE: Assuming version 2.2.0-rc1 or greater
• Click 'Tools' -> 'Board' -> 'Generic ESP8266 Module'
• Click 'Tools' -> 'Upload Speed' -> '460800' # I am impatient and this seems to work, even though the IDE warns about it
• Click 'Tools' -> 'Port' -> Select your port
• Upload your sketch

Note: You can still use esptool.py if you want

• https://github.com/themadinventor/esptool
• Follow the steps below. The same command should work with any version

perl -i -pe "s#tools.esptool.upload.pattern=.*#tools.esptool.upload.pattern=/usr/bin/python ${HOME}/bin/esptool.py --port \"{serial.port}\" write_flash 0x00000 \"{build.path}/{build.project_name}.bin\"#" `cd ~/Library/Arduino15/packages/esp8266/hardware/esp8266/; ls -d -1 $PWD/*|tail -1`/platform.txt

Steps required for previous versions

• See: https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino
• Remove old possibly conflicting config

mv ~/Library/Arduino15 ~/Library/Arduino15-old
mkdir ~/Library/Arduino15
cp ~/Library/Arduino15-old/preferences.txt ~/Library/Arduino15

• Start Arduino (Note: Assuming version 1.6.7)
• Click 'Arduino' -> 'Preferences'
  • Additional Boards Manager URLs: http://arduino.esp8266.com/staging/package_esp8266com_index.json
• Restart Arduino IDE
• Click 'Tools' -> 'Board' -> 'Boards Manager'
  • Select 'Generic ESP8266 Module' # NOTE: Assuming version 2.1.0-rc2 (see replace below)
• Stop Arduino IDE
• Install pyserial, esptool, and reconfigure IDE to use pyserial

sudo pip install pyserial
mkdir ~/bin
cd /tmp && git clone https://github.com/themadinventor/esptool && cp esptool/esptool.py ~/bin/esptool.py

# Note: using command line substitution with ${HOME} below because the platform.txt file cannot interpret ~
perl -i -pe "s#tools.esptool.upload.pattern=.*#tools.esptool.upload.pattern=/usr/bin/python ${HOME}/bin/esptool.py --port \"{serial.port}\" write_flash 0x00000 \"{build.path}/{build.project_name}.bin\"#" `cd ~/Library/Arduino15/packages/esp8266/hardware/esp8266/; ls -d -1 $PWD/*|tail -1`/platform.txt

• Start Arduino IDE
• Connect your ESP8266
• Upload your sketch

FTDI or PL2303 Connection