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.

The ESP8266 is a chip that turned a lot of heads recently, stuffing a WiFi radio, TCP/IP stack, and all the required bits to get a microcontroller on the Internet into a tiny, $5 module.

That's where an ESP8266 comes in. It's basically a Wi-Fi microcontroller that you can hook up to more or less anything, and there are a few reasons why you should consider it as the centerpiece of ...