NodeMCU Tutorial Series Part II: NodeMCU Server Control Over Local Area Network

This tutorial takes full advantage of the ESP8266 WiFi chip by serving a local webpage to control the general purpose input and output (GPIO) pins on a NodeMCU microcontroller. Some basic HTML and CSS programming methods will be utilized to create a stylish webpage that is both asynchronous (AJAX) and input-driven - this will give the user the ability to control the pins on the microcontroller. For the current example, an electromagnet and LED will be controlled using pulse width modulation (PWM) and simple high/low logic, respectively. The PWM control allows the user to change the voltage to the component, altering the magnetic field of the electromagnet. For the LED, the traditional digitalWrite() method will turn the LED on and off.