“This is an amazing approach to program these small power microcontroller without spending a lot of money on development shields.
I am using ESP8266 module in lots of projects. But always I have to use development board for that. ESP8266 development board came as NODEMCU. Which has onboard programming IC, controlling circuitry, voltage regulators, USB port and ESP12E microcontroller. This board comes at a price of $7 to $15 depending upon the quality and brand.
One major thing with this board is Wi-Fi connectivity over a 32bit powerful microcontroller. I made a separate tutorial in which you can learn “how to use this MCU with Arduino IDE” and “how to program esp8266 using mobile”.
If I am doing any project, I have to use different development board which cost me $7. But I want to only utilize 32bit $2 esp12E microcontroller. I came with a solution of my ESP programming shield. Using this we can program ESP12E directly using Arduino IDE and no need on any external programmer. I made 2 different PCB one for the ESP and other for the programmer. Now you can just plug the MCU in the programmer shield and upload code to that.”