Transparent 802.11-Serial Bridge?

[TheAdmiralty]

Evening, guys!

I'd asked something similar in the past, but I'm back with another question.  Long story short, I'm working right now on interfacing a small vehicle with a smartphone - we need the ability to send a small number of commands from an application to an access point hosted by the vehicle (think a mars rover).

I'm looking into either one of the cheap ESP8266 modules, or something like Microchip's RN1810E.  I've been busy with the rest of the power delivery and control system, so I haven't had much time to deal with actually playing around with either of these in hardware, meaning I only know what was explained in the datasheets... and for the ESP-xx, that means absolutely nothing.  As it stands right now, I need a device where I can connect a client device to its hosted wireless network, telnet into that IP at a certain port, and send ASCII data transparently over a UART without dealing with the network stack.

I've read that these ESP modules can be flashed with something called 'esp-link' which will do this, but I can find nothing on how to reload new firmware onto these reliably.  I specifically am dealing with a handful of ESP07 modules.  With Microchip's 'WiFly' modules I feel like this is entirely possible, but I can't seem to find any sort of application note with details on how to get it working.

Any thoughts?  Has anyone else out there needed something like this in the past that would be willing to elaborate?

[andtfoot]

I have no idea about the modules/chips you are talking about, but as for wifi->serial maybe something like this can be adapted?
https://www.globalcache.com/products/itach/wf2slspecs/
It's RS-232, but maybe there's a level converter chip that could be bypassed.

[deebee]

Hi,
I have recently required something similar and tried this
http://www.roboremo.com/esp8266-tcp-to-serial.html
I looked at esp-link as well but also found this alternative. I used the Arduino IDE version and set it up in station mode but it also has an AP mode if that is preferred. Initial tests showed it to be working well although I have not tried it long term in the real application yet.
Might solve your problem. Was very easy to install and use and looks like it could be customised easily.