Talk:NodeMCU

Declaration of interest / PoV

Vowstar and TerryE are community committers on the Github NodeMCU firmware project. Neither are paid by NodeMCU inc, but we provide our contributions pro-bono for the user community. I will correct any factual inaccuracies in this article. -- TerryE (talk) 18:46, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

I see a need for more in-depth info on the NodeMCU...

There should be a section which describes the various boards available. I have just added a link to such an article by "frightanic". I could provide some photos. I have a couple Amica brand NodeMCU v1.0 boards and a couple LoLin NodeMCU boards. We should try to identify the various NodeMCU makers. I know of three: Amica, LoLin and Doit/SmartArduino. Anyone else make them? What are significant features that distinguish the different versions of these boards? What what about performance? Who's using Dual SPI (DIO) verses Quad SPI (QIO) to address flash memory? QIO should be faster, but DIO gives you 2 more GPIO pins -- GPIO9 (D11) & GPIO10 (D12). It's still not clear if NodeMCUs support both modes and it's just a software setting you need to make, or if it is a hardware patch that manufacturers make (at one time it was a hardware hack that required skilled hands of an expert solderer). The unfortunate side to the ESP8266 (& hence, NodeMCU), is the lack of documentation from Espressif about the ESP8266 (a situation that has slowly been improving).

Also, what defines a NodeMCU board as compared to other ESP8266 boards that happen to include a USB-to-TTL/UART bridge chip and a 3.3V regulator tied to the micro-USB 5V power supply line? Well, lets see... the firmware should be NodeMCU firmware (something that can be downloaded from GitHub for other ESP8266 boards), and the I/O pin naming scheme should be the same (NodeMCUs call the GPIO pins D0 thru D8, and RX & TX, while other boards either use the original GPIO pin numbers, or assign their own (different) pin numbering scheme. The board's form-factor (size, shape and layout) needs to be the same, or at least similar. And that's about it. It's not hard to brew your own NodeMCU from other ESP8266 boards given the free support of the ESP8266 User Community. -- 116.31.83.194 (talk) 21:13, 15 July 2016 (UTC)William Moore

One of the issues that the article doesn't fully clarify is that NodeMCU refers to 'two' different scopes:

• A range of DevKit boards which include an ESP8266 module (typically the 12E)
• The Lua-based firmware build with is now supported by an Open-source community and which can run on 'any' ESP8266 module (including the DevKits).

I personally think that the level of detail that you are requesting goes beyond WP content guidelines and is best covered by referring out to supplier reference. TerryE (talk)

Is NodeMCU the defunct Devkit or the Lua firmware Project?

This page was originally created by Vowstar in April 2015 to give a WP presence to the NodeMCU Devkit. Given that this Devkit has largely been displaced by the cheaper Wemos ESP8266 boards, this original scope would now probably fall into the "candidate for deletion" category. However later in 2015, the owner of NodeMCU Inc handed over control of the NodeMCU firmware development to the community project which has actively developed and extended the firmware since, and this firmware is actively used by IoT developers.

Recent edits by Stesmo and others have changed the implicit content of the article by removing all links (except one reference) to the Open source project to the point that it is now materially misleading for the WP readers of this page wanting to see an article on the firmware. I feel that there are two realistic options for removing this misdirection.

• Initiating deletion because a Devkit centric article fails under the WP:NOTE criteria.
• Moving the focus towards the software project which has an active and sizeable presence in the IoT community and therefore I believe passes the WP:NOTE criteria in the same way that the Node-RED project does (and this page probably sets a good example of the level of content that should be in this page).

In this latter case, I would suggest that we trim a lot of the content as:

• The references to The Button, NodeUSB and ijWatch are just placement and need removed
• The coding examples are covered far more comprehensively in the Github project documentation.
• The hardware references should be demoted to a historic para / section

However, before making any changes, I am canvassing views, as I would prefer to avoid any conflict over edits. TerryE (talk) 02:38, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Hello. Thank you for pinging me, TerryE! To be frank, based on our conversation on my Talk page and the contents of this Talk page, I believe you have too much WP:COI here to be discussing moving the direction of the page towards your community and away from the subject of the article.

To address your points here, removing external links from an article should make zero negative changes to the *content* of a decently written article. The body of the article is not diminished by removing spam or unnecessary external links, as these are things that by their very nature are *external* to the article. And, we are not here to direct traffic to external sites. This article's goals should be to educate readers on the subject. It is not meant to be a front page for a github community. The Official Website link is not to promote or drive traffic, rather "Official links (if any) are provided to give the reader the opportunity to see what the subject says about itself." More information on Wikipedia's guidelines on External Links are included at WP:EL. Additionally, there is more discussion between TerryE and I about this subject at my Talk page.

As to nominating this article for WP:AfD, you should start that process if you feel that this article's subject lacks the Notability to have an article here. As you have COI, your request for a new article to be created by someone else for your community can include the WP:RS references that show that your community meets WP:NOTABILITY. Stesmo (talk)

I am aware of the potential COI, but surely this still doesn't stop me posing Qs for other editors that should be addressed. For example in this case there is a holding page (actually 2, one in English and one in Chinese) last updated in 2014 referencing a HW product that is no longer manufactured; there is also an active IoT project which is used in the wider IoT community and is often references in independent technical resources, a move of emphasis that was both initiated by and is continued to supported by the owner of NodeMCU Inc (see #577 et al). Yes, the original article was flawed and either needed improving or deleting, but in your (collective) edits, you have removed all references to the IoT project and left a link to a 3 year-old static web page. IT projects morph over time and in the case of IoT this is happening rapidly. In this dialogue and on your talk page you have justify your edits based on assertions that are not evidence-based. Your edits freeze an active IoT project at its 2014 status, and there is no point in WP attempting to "educate readers" on a three year old snapshot of an IoT development, so yes if you do this, then the page does fail the noteworthy test. If we did the same to many other IoT projects, then they would also would become WP:AfD candidates.

In terms of my potential COI, I contribute to a range of open source projects. There is no financial return or kudos in my doing any of this. Yes, the NodeMCU development is one of them. WP content is another. But the very nature of an open-source project is that people who can contribute to it are encouraged to do so. My interest here on WP is that I would prefer to see this page accurately reflect the current status of the project that was originally initiated by the owner of NodeMCU, or have it removed if it becomes materially misleading to WP readers who want to know what NodeMCU is now. TerryE (talk) 12:44, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Who is Hong?

The History section mentions Hong without any source of reference or background. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Macgyver24x7 (talk • contribs) 14:28, 1 March 2021 (UTC)