Every since the ESP8266 modules were released, I have wanted to try one. I ordered a few once they came out last year, but did not get to try them out until this year. After trying one module that seemed to work but never could be connected to, I tried another and was finally able to get one to work. The only test I actually did with it was to grab a webpage, basically a curl call. That was earlier in the year and had done nothing else since with them.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://community.robotshop.com/index.php/blog/show/esp8266-running-nodemcu-as-a-controller