It appears as though it is better to buy V2 which is smaller so that it can still fit on a breadboard. V3 has too little addition, but is much larger and covers whole space on the breadboard. You can use 2 breadboards side by side though.
Comparison of ESP8266 NodeMCU development boards
Since this article has become quite long, and to give you an idea what to expect, I decided to put a TOC here:
- Names of NodeMCU development boards
- Comparison of NodeMCU development boards
- Relationship between NodeMCU and Amica
- Official vs Unofficial
- Alternatives
Names of NodeMCU development boards
It’s unfortunate that there’s a mixup of version and generation names.| Generation | Version | “Common” Name |
|---|---|---|
| 1st | 0.9 | V1 |
| 2nd | 1.0 | V2 |
| 2nd | 1.0 | V3 |
What further contributes to the naming jungle is precisely the fact that the hardware is open-source and anyone can produce and market NoduMCU development boards. There currently are three primary producers: Amica (see ‘NodeMCU and Amica‘ below), DOIT/SmartArduino, and LoLin/WeMos.
Comparison of NodeMCU development boards
1st and 2nd generation boards are easy to tell apart because their size is quite different. Both generations use ESP-12 chips with 4MB flash but the 2nd generation uses the newer and enhanced ESP-12E.1st generation / v0.9 / V1
The original but now outdated dev kit is usually sold with an outstanding yellow board and is very wide. Its 47mm x 31mm mean that it covers all 10 pins of a regular bread board which makes it very inconvenient to use. There’s a blog post with a picture that demonstrates this quite clearly. They seem to be produced by Amica primarily (my guess).It comes with a ESP-12 module and 4MB flash memory.
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2nd generation / v1.0 / V2
The V2 fixes the short comings of the initial board, it’s more narrow and fits nicely into bread boards. The chip was upgraded from a ESP-12 to a ESP-12E. |
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V3
So, what’s with the V3? NodeMCU haven’t released a new specification so far. Hence, there’s no official 3rd generation board. Turns out that V3 is a “version” invented by producer LoLin to signify minor improvements to the V2 boards. Among others they claim their USB port to be more robust.
Watch out though for the difference in size! This LoLin board is significantly larger than the Amica and DOIT V2 boards. Because of its size I would never use it. There are clearly better alternatives.
AND what’s LoLin got to do with WeMos? I wish I knew…The pin layout you see here was originally hosted on wemos.cc but the link is now dead.
Relationship between NodeMCU and AmicaWhat’s the relationship between NodeMCU and Amica? Here’s what I know.
Many V2 boards are created by or at least labeled with ‘Amica’. It’s a brand name created by the Dutch Gerwin Janssen who seems to spend a lot of time in Shenzhen, China. He’s behind the NodeMCU Facebook account and owns the amica.io domain.
Although not officially part of the original NodeMCU team Gerwin designed a name for the devkit v1, called Amica. The team liked it and adopted the name.
Official vs Unofficial
NodeMCU posted a photo on Facebook which shows official and unofficial V2 boards. I don’t really understand the notion of official. It’s my understanding that with open-source hardware there’s no such thing as official boards. What it maybe means is that Amica is the “endorsed” producer and DOIT & LoLin are not.
Alternatives
WeMos D1 mini
At the end of 2015 the hottest alternative seems to be the WeMos D1 mini. It has roughly the same width as a V2 NodeMCU devkit but at 34.2mm it is nearly a third shorter. It runs an ESP-8266EX MCU and provides 4MB flash. Its nine GPIO pins make the D1 mini suitable for a large IoT target audience. It supports both Arduino and NodeMCU.
The only downside for many may be that you have to solder the pins yourself. Each D1 mini comes with a pair of long and short female pins and a pair of normal pins. Some reports on the Internet claim that it can be a bit difficult to get proper drivers for the CH34x USB to serial chip on the D1 mini. That’s the same chip used by some of the cheap Arduino clones.
Also, it’s obviously got a few pins less than the NodeMCU boards, check the pin map. How else would they be able to reduce the length so much? On the other hand it’s also got a 5V out just like the LoLin V3.
Oh, and the best part? They’re sold at Aliexpress for just MYR 16.45 ( $4)! I ordered mine on December 19th and got them in the mail on the 31st, that’s impressive. They’re sent by registered(!) air mail.
WiFiMCU
DOIT/SmartArduino, producer of V2 boards, also has a dev kit alternative that uses a Cortex-M4 chip instead of the ESP8266 with otherwise the same board.Adafruit/SparkFun
Recently I discovered Adafruit sells a development very similar to the NodeMCU v2 dev kit but with an additional LiPo connector – pretty cool. See the separate article for details.
ESP8285 development board
In a separate article from June 2016 I’ll show you how to use the NodeMCU firmware on a tiny ESP8285 development board. That SoC is very similar to the ESP8266 except that it’s got 1MB SPI flash embedded right in the SoC.
26 thoughts on “Comparison of ESP8266 NodeMCU development boards”
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Ok, now back to getting my ESP8266 based OneWire temperature server sketch complete and debugged…
Lolin board is my second favorite as it is cheap and the pin spacing seems to work fine with dupont connectors why breadboard when you can create cheap wiring harnesses to do the work with mostly every module out there. It is dupont harnessing or go home for me custom harnesses are relatively simplistic by nature and cheap and effective if only other people understood this principal … I think we may see more of an influx of testing and projects.
Available on Tindie now: tindie.com/products/Knewron/smartwifi-development-module-esp8266-based/
Just wanted to mention that Wemos’s D1 mini is not the same as their previous LoLin board which I have – D1 has quite a few pins less, specifically soft SPI and SDIO pins (SD0-3, SDCLK, SDCMD interleaved with MOSI, MISO, SCLK, CS and GPIO9/D11, GPIO10/D12).
I suppose you knew about that, but I thought it needed to be explicitelly stated for those who thought, like I did, that D1 mini is just different form factor with two-sided components.
Basically, an updated/shortened LoLin board…
So, maybe you should emphasize that if you need those pins, one should not go for D1 mini but instead go for regular V2/V3 board.
Cheers, Andrea
The CH340 is proving to be popular and drivers are much easier to find. The CH340 driver was incorporated into Chrome OS very recently and seems to be there by default in Ubuntu.
Make sure to solder the four legs to stabilize the connector. Solder can be applied from back with a hotter fine tipped iron.
I spent hours of frustration, changing cables, using different software, baud rates, and cursing different parts of the universe, before I noticed that the USB connector was not secure.