Getting a NodeMcu temperature monitor working..

Tore myself away from the TV and feeling in a programming kinda mood after a CoderDojo mentor's meeting earlier I decided to burn some code to a NodeMcu :)
http://www.nodemcu.com/index_en.html

So I followed the steps at: https://nodemcu.readthedocs.io/en/master/en/getting-started/

And so first I made a generic build at: https://nodemcu-build.com/index.php which e-mails you progress :)

I then download to my Windows 10 laptop the resulting binary:
nodemcu-master-7-modules-2019-03-30-20-05-51-integer.bin

I then downloaded NodeMCU PyFlasher and updated my USB serial driver. I then ran and flashed the binary. It was painless :)

Not sure how to test what was flashed though!

I think I need debug out from the device :) The pins are all labelled so GND, TX0, RX0 should do me to a USB serial converter :)
https://iotbytes.wordpress.com/nodemcu-pinout/

Well that worked straight away!

Now what to do? I want an ambient temperature probe to publish to a MQTT topic over Wifi.

Tried connecting to ESP_2871DF on 192.168.4.1 over wifi using fixed IP 192.168.4.2 but nothing shown using Explore Edge browser

So I need to read up on both UART and WIFI module as built into the binary image :)

Ah I've downloaded the firmware modules but I now need to download a program to use them!!
https://frightanic.com/iot/tools-ides-nodemcu/

I downloaded ESPlorer https://esp8266.ru/esplorer/ and ran it (after unzipping) the serial console worked fine when connected to COM6 at 115200 baud and after reseting the NodeMCU next to download some code to it.

So I read:
#http://esp8266.ru/download/esp8266-doc/Getting%20Started%20with%20the%20ESPlorer%20IDE%20-%20Rui%20Santos.pdf

Great followed the instructions and got a flash blue LED going on my NodeMcu as file init.lua :)

Then I removed NodeMcu from laptop and ran it from a USB battery pack :)

Worked fine
(Add photo)

Now for some real code :) So over to: https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-firmware/tree/master/lua_examples

I tried the following code (with real "SSID" and "password" values):
print(wifi.sta.getip())
wifi.setmode(wifi.STATION)
station_cfg={}
station_cfg.ssid="SSID"
station_cfg.pwd="password"
station_cfg.save=true
wifi.sta.config(station_cfg)
print(wifi.sta.getip())

which produced the following Wifi Router entry:

NODE-2871DF_Wireless

EC:FA:BC:28:71:DF

192.168.1.146

Great! Now to publish to MQTT broker! Then to read a temp sensor :)

Will do this tomorrow following:
https://www.foobarflies.io/a-simple-connected-object-with-nodemcu-and-mqtt/