WIFI shield vs ESP8266

I don’t mind buying the WIFI shield, but I do happen to have a smattering of WIFI devices lying around the house already, namely multiple ESP8266 based boards and one ESP32 based board, and it would be nice to make use of stuff I already have. I’m tempted to attached one of the ESP8266 boards to an OpenMV. Not only would this add WIFI to the OpenMV (I have an M7 and an H7) but it would also add more GPIOs and additional processing (not heavy-lifting compared to the OpenMV, just secondary logic on the various pins and such). Furthermore, since the ESP8266 can also be programmed in MicroPython, both systems can easily live in a single code base.

Would you expect the WIFI shield to significantly outperform an ESP8266 based WIFI board or is the main advantage just the network library integration with the shield, which presumably vastly simplifies the coding process of adding wireless behavior?

Thanks.

Once we finish our RPC library for the Arduino then you can use that to link COMs between the OpenMV Cam and the ESP8266/32. Larry already wrote some of the Arduino code… But, I need to debug it.

The WiFi shield does 15 Mb/s transmit.

Are you saying without your upcoming library it is impossible for me to do it on my own? I figured I could send data from the M7/H7 to the ESP board (whatever one I use) over a serial connection.

No, it’s just harder as you have to write your own protocol.

Ah. No worries. I’ll probably end up buying the shield anyway, just to support the project. It’s just that I have all these little 8266s lying around anyway, so I’m looking for ways to leverage them.

Thanks again.