Thanks. i didn't know there was special firmware required for talking "AT" commands to the WIFI module. it thought the UART1 rx pin wasn't exposed for that reason.
i did see the examples, but i didn't find the implementation of the lower-level API and assumed that even at that level it is UART based.
It only uses at commands when you have the at command firmware loaded. It was originally used as an addon to other microcontrollers. If you are putting code on the nodemcu device it doesn't use at commands. See the examples.
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