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.

The ESP8266 WiFi module is the latest, made interesting because it pretty much doesn’t exist outside China. Why is it cool? It’s a WiFi module with an SOC, making it somewhat similar to TI ...