Interfacing the ESP8266 WiFi module with RPZ

Earlier in the book, we covered a hack for taking a USB Wi-Fi adapter and hard-wiring it to the Raspberry Pi Zero board. This works just fine, but you can also configure Wi-Fi communication over the GPIO port! Truly, the Raspberry Pi's flexibility in configuration is astounding. In this hack, we will connect and play around with the inexpensive and popular ESP8266 to get our RPZ talking over Wi-Fi. We will also use some of the skills we picked up in earlier recipes talking over the GPIO serial bus to open the door to even cooler hacks!

Getting ready

You don't need much for this except your Raspberry Pi Zero and the ESP8266. The one I used was from Adafruit, called the ESP-12-E, but there several options available. I would go with anyone that is already mounted to a board for prototyping, unless you are planning to solder it to a custom-made circuit board to attach to your Raspberry Pi Zero. If not, you'll need some jumper cables and a breadboard...