I have to agree with @Costas here. The Arduino environment has proven to be a great way to take some baby steps into programming land because it’s not hard to learn. If students really want, they can go climb up the ladder and take it to the next level with other tooling. There is a tendency (world wide) that people are getting lazy and tools like Arduino make hard things really easy. So it may be like McD, who cares? I get the job done in the minimum amount of time.
If you want to meddle with the hardcore programming C stuff, be my guest, but it’s just not my cup of tea. As far as I can see it’s not right to call Arduino “the worst” ever because it’s simply not true and way to harsh for a product which works well for apparently a lot of people. I can imagine you want to teach students in the mechanical/electrical area in a different way, but you should give them a CHOICE, instead of forcing something down their throats. I’d quit my school if it were that way … We live in a free country and you should be able to make your own grown-up choices. Treating students like kids will not make for better thinking engineers, it will just make for mindless people who don’t know what they are doing because they stop asking questions.
As for engineering you might be or might not be aware of the fact everywhere there are strict standards that were made based on different events from the past people tend to learn in this area from their mistakes this is strictly to save human lives and prolong durability of designed hardware. This is why engineers will be taught according to standards that exist in industry and there is nothing wrong with that. If you would ever own a company and tell people to use arduino to program for example Traction Control system for a car or something similar. In case of accident you would end up in jail and also with debt of probably something around 500mln $.
I like the discussion very much, but it was not intended to unleash a war . Thanks for the hints, I will seriously look at it. I started this topic to ask for opinions and support how to use Blynk within the context of our projects. @Dmitriy give some answers. The big problem for me is to build the firmware for the ESP or if we wait 5-6 weeks ( Dmitriy hopes ) it’s conform our needs. Are there some specifications how this wil work? In the mean time we can work on the CLI ( the protocol is more or less clear ) and test the combination.
I stay open for other opinions and/or support. Thanks and regards…
@Dmitriy and the Blynk team. If you are working on the promised ESP8266 firmware please look seriously at ESP-LINK ( https://github.com/jeelabs/esp-link ), it’s very comfortable ( for example the support for a remote HW reset of the micro-controller via gpio0 ). Also the uC Console support is nice ( only poor in terminal settings, I am missing local echo on/off etc.).
Can I unzip Blynk_v0.3.3.zip and put it in the sketch library folder by my self?
Update-2:
No, get the message: Invalid library found…
Update-3:
Aha… there is another library: blynk-library-master.zip Success with the facility Add .ZIP Library… Included the Blink library ( #include <BlynkApiArduino.h> until #include <WidgetTerminal.h> ). Leaf setup and loop the same as in step 2. got the error:
D:\Arduino\arduino-builder -dump-prefs -logger=machine -hardware “D:\Arduino\hardware” -hardware “C:\Users\Wijnand\AppData\Local\Arduino15\packages” -tools "D:\Arduino\tools-
In file included from C:\Users\Wijnand\Documents\Arduino\ESP8266-Thing_Blynk\ESP8266-Thing_Blynk.ino:2:0:
C:\Users\Wijnand\Documents\Arduino\libraries\blynk-library-master/BlynkApiParticle.h:15:25: fatal error: application.h: No such file or directory
#include “application.h”
^
compilation terminated.
Using library blynk-library-master at version 0.3.3 in folder: C:\Users\Wijnand\Documents\Arduino\libraries\blynk-library-master
exit status 1
Error compiling for board SparkFun ESP8266 Thing.
Do I have to include other libraries???
I am lost!
@Wijnand there are 5 libraries in the zip file so you can’t use the Arduino IDE library manager but you can manually unzip and put them in your libraries directory, wherever they are on your system.
Then you need the Arduino ESP core which will give you access to the Sparkfun board. Don’t quote me but something like add http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json to additional boards field in your Arduino IDE prferences, accessed from File menu.
Close and restart IDE and then go to find your board from Tools. Before this stage you might need to add the ESP8266 core from Sketch menu, include library, library manager.
@Costas OK, that helps a lot, thanks a lot. If the Blynk-team is not working conform the Arduino .zip library standard, it makes it difficult. I included only the Blynk lib, not BlynkESP8266_HardSer, BlynkESP8266_SoftSer, SimpleTimer or Time. Error:
C:\Users\Wijnand\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Blynk/BlynkApiParticle.h:15:25: fatal error: application.h: No such file or directory
#include “application.h”
^
compilation terminated.
Using library Blynk at version 0.3.3 in folder: C:\Users\Wijnand\Documents\Arduino\libraries\Blynk
exit status 1
Error compiling for board SparkFun ESP8266 Thing.
OK I dropped my own startup ( the blink example with: digitalWrite(ESP8266_LED, HIGH/LOW with using the Blynk library ) and take the example BlynkBlink . Compiles perfect ( why compiles Arduino IDE all the files every time? Don’t they use make?) but no connection with the App.
Have you obtained a token from the Blynk app and added it to your sketch?
Is your Sparkfun device connecting to your AP (requires SSID and pwd in your sketch)?
Sorry about bringing up an older thread here, but I just downloaded Blynk today and began working with it. Below is the error message from the Arduino IDE 1.6.9…same issue as above:
In file included from /Users/Adam/Documents/Arduino/TBLBrew_Working/TBLBrew_Working.ino:2:0:
/Users/Adam/Documents/Arduino/libraries/Blynk/BlynkApiParticle.h:15:25: fatal error: application.h: No such file or directory #include “application.h”
I have manually unzipped all the folders and placed them in the “Library” directory. I even performed a systemwide search for any file named “application.h” and it cannot be located.
ESP8266, but I haven’t got even that far yet. When I include Blynk, everything appears to import into the sketch okay, but when I verify the sketch, I get the above error. The sketch is in its infancy right now.
@bigern00 from the image you have posted you seem to have every microprocessor known to man in your ‘laboratory’.
Lets take a step back. You have an ESP8266 so you should start with an ESP8266 sketch.
If you have installed the 5 libraries correctly you should now go:
File, Examples, Blynk, Boards and Shields, ESP8266_Standalone.
Read all the notes in the sketch including references to the board, ssid, pwd and token etc.
You will see that this file only contains 2 headers and not the 20 or so headers you have.
If the standalone sketch works for you i.e. Serial Monitor shows you are connected to the Blynk server you can then start to add your code to it.
Blynk sketches need to be structured quite differently to Arduino sketches because you are working with a cloud server so your main loop will need to be almost empty and you need to call your functions with a timer.
Generally a Blynk sketch loop will look like this for ALL your projects:
void loop()
{
Blynk.run();
timer.run();
}
We can explain this in more detail if required but try to get standalone working first.
Thanks @vshymanskyy & @Costas…after digging around on the web I found where you both previously answered this question more or less. I have a lot more to do to get this sketch totally working, but this helped me make big progress while I am awaiting other hardware.
The goal of this sketch is to make a Blynk connected Arduino controller for a home brewery…based on my previous post I assure you I’m a better brewer than software engineer.
. Thanks for the hints, I will seriously look at it. I started this topic to ask for opinions and support how to use Blynk within the context of our projects. 
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