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A Look at Embedded WiFi Development Boards
- gh02t 11y agoOne thing that this article kind of glosses over is that there are a ton of different form factors for the ESP8266 (ESP-01 is the original, also the ESP-03, -07 and -12 are common). Most of them are rather inconvenient to work with directly though, not least because they aren't breadboard friendly. There are a bunch of breakouts made though that help this and integrate a voltage regulator, power jack, pin breakouts etc. The NodeMCU dev board mentioned is one- Adafruit, Olimex, Sparkfun and RaysHobby also make them and they are much easier to use for hobby projects. I've had to use an ESP-12 directly for a project before due to space constraints and it was a hassle.
- jwatte 11y agoThree pieces of wire makes a harness that removed the hassle and takes 2 minutes to crimp.
- gh02t 11y agoI'm curious, what exactly do you mean? Are you talking about wiring the pull-up's for an ESP-01? I was more thinking the SMD form factor packages like the ESP-07, which expose a bunch more pins but in a 2mm pitch.
- No1 11y ago> Most of them are rather inconvenient to work with directly though, not least because they aren't breadboard friendly. You're looking for the ESP-201: http://smarpl.com/sites/default/files/images/ESP8266-ESP-201-IMG_7906.jpg http://smarpl.com/sites/default/files/images/ESP8266-ESP-201... Enjoy!
- epalmer 11y agoAvailable on banggood http://www.banggood.com/ESP8266-ESP-201-Remote-Serial-Port-WIFI-Transceiver-Wireless-Module-p-964288.html http://www.banggood.com/ESP8266-ESP-201-Remote-Serial-Port-W... Disclaimer: I have not used this board nor ordered from Banggood.
- dperfect 11y ago> [Philips Hue Bulb] A $50 light bulb that requires a $60 base station, proving my point entirely I'm not sure what this has to do with the article. Philips Hue uses ZigBee Light Link, not WiFi, and I'm pretty sure the steep price tag has nothing to do with hardware costs. As for WiFi, it is exciting to see hardware like ESP8266 open up previously cost-prohibitive possibilities for hackers. My biggest complaint about using WiFi for IoT-related projects is the fact that every marketable WiFi-enabled device has it's own (often cumbersome) association/inclusion process. Perhaps that's a feature - enabling more options for wireless network security, but when it comes to user experience, the standard bluetooth pairing process makes WiFi association feel like pulling teeth for the average consumer. Maybe we just need a good WPS replacement.
- hagope 11y agoI agree that setup for WiFi IoT products is a total pain. The simplest method I've seen is what WeMo uses...out of the box device is an Access Point, you connect, then enter your own network credentials...still takes a few minutes, but beats requiring another hub.
- CamperBob2 11y agoThis could be so much easier if Microsoft hadn't f---ed up their Bluetooth Low Energy implementation in Windows. BLE is a much better fit for a lot of these applications than WiFi, but by forcing users to deal with pairing, Microsoft has completely blown off its biggest advantage. Very frustrating from a device maker's point of view, and consumers literally don't know what they're missing.
- hlfshell 11y agoI was mistaken on the ZigBee, thanks for the correction. I will also agree that the setup is a pain in the butt for most of these things. I think that's why the Chromecast's and Dash's ultrasonic methods are interesting. Perhaps a low cost NFC one touch setup would be really cool, but any method I think of requires an extra app. But maybe that's not a bad thing?
- jwatte 11y agoYou can do worse than defaulting to the ESP8266. Very cheap, good tool chain available, simple component infrastructure.
- jdthomas 11y agoNice summary. I recently picked up an ESP8266 for a project, but yet to start farting around with it. Excited to find some spare time.
- No1 11y ago> While controlling the ESP8266 is great, the raw chip itself lacks an analog to digical [sic] converter (ADC) The ESP-12 and a few other models have an ADC integrated. > and only a few I/O pins. Again, with 9 GPIO pins on the ESP-12 (and various numbers in between on other models), I wonder how many are required to qualify as more than a few. > [Philips Hue Bulb] A $50 light bulb that requires a $60 base station, proving my point entirely As another poster mentions, Philips Hue uses ZigBee Light Link, not WiFi. All around, a sloppy blog post, but slick web page.
- gh02t 11y agoThey all have an ADC, it's part of the chip. It's just not broken out on all of them. It's also not that great, 10bit resolution is so-so and it only works for signals between 0 and 1V. This means you can't easily use for instance the awesome TMP36 temperature sensors with it. I mean you can, but you need something like a voltage divider (which adds error) and you need to recalculate the voltage to temperature conversion.
- jordz 11y agoAwesome to see this, I've had several of these nRF24L01's (ESP8266's) for a while with Arduino Micro's and some solid state relays to create my own automated light switching system. I also managed to create a digital AC dimmer for about £10 :) Phone -> Controller Dimmer -> Winning
- vectorjohn 11y agoLook at Digistump Oak[0]. It's still in pre-order but the company has delivered many products at this point, and it's expected soon this year. [0] http://digistump.com/products/145 http://digistump.com/products/145
- Florin_Andrei 11y agoThat looks pretty good. I've pre-ordered it, can't wait for it to come out so I can play with it.
- nfriedly 11y agoYea, the Oak is probably the one that I'm the most excited about. I also backed one of Digistump's earlier kickstarters and was very pleased with both the hardware and the support.
- vectorjohn 11y agoYeah, I've bought a few of their digispark chips. They're $8 and work great. This one's faster, has more storage, a few more bells and whistles, plus WiFi for $2 more. I can't not buy some.
- MrBuddyCasino 11y agoNice. Is there data about expected throughout? I'm interested in audio streaming.
- skimmas 11y agoJust recieved today a cactus micro rev.2 . Arduino+wifi+recognized as mouse/keyboard. Pretty crazy little board.
- nfriedly 11y agoIf you're interested in a NodeMCU board, I'd recommend this one: http://www.electrodragon.com/product/nodemcu-lua-amica-r2-esp8266-wifi-board/ http://www.electrodragon.com/product/nodemcu-lua-amica-r2-es...
- gh02t 11y agoThe ones RaysHobby makes are pretty awesome too. They come with an RGB LED and LIPO power jack on board, plus they have the connector for an external antenna. Bit more expensive though ($16). He ships them with NodeMCU pre-flashed and the schematics are all open source. http://rayshobby.net/cart/esp8266/esptoy http://rayshobby.net/cart/esp8266/esptoy
- zubairsaif007 11y agohttp://googler700.blogspot.com/ http://googler700.blogspot.com/
- BostonEnginerd 11y agoI'm concerned about the TCP stacks on these boards. Near as I can tell, they're all built into the chips and no source code is available. Is my impression correct?
- joezydeco 11y agoYeah, they're pretty much black boxes. You are literally talking to them like you used to work with modems. "AT+" commands and all of that.
- nemik 11y agoYou can program the ESP8266 yourself. For its TCP stack it uses lwip which you can also compile yourself. The 802.11 stack is more of a black box though, but not necessarily the TCP stack.
- unclesaamm 11y agoWhat's the situation like for HTTPS in the embedded world?
- lmf4o 11y agoi totally love the esp201. its very convenient to work with in eclipse/code blocks and can run C and C++. the documentation is a bit sparse though but thats mostly no problem as theres a great community behind it. But the biggest point for me is the size + the price. Why would one use a Raspi or Arduino to read out some moisture-meter if it can be done with a 3 dollar hardware piece the size of a fingernail?
- technomancy 11y ago> Why would one use a Raspi or Arduino to read out some moisture-meter if it can be done with a 3 dollar hardware piece the size of a fingernail? The article states that it lacks analog input, so that might be a good reason.
- bjpirt 11y agoThe article is wrong (at least partially!) - the module they used (the ESP-01) only has a limited number of pins brought out, but the chip itself has a 10 bit ADC on board and there are plenty of modules that bring out the pins. I've been using lots of ESP-12 modules and they're great
- alkonaut 11y agoWhat are the power requirements of WiFi gadgets compared to other wireless tech? I was under the impression that WiFi wasn't a good choice for embedded because it's so power hungry that it can't be powered for extended time on batteries? There aren't many places where I want tiny wireless things where I also have access to AC power. That's basically limited to sockets/switches.
- nfriedly 11y agoI believe the peak consumption of the ESP8266 can hit 300-400mA when transmitting, so yea that will kill a small battery pretty quickly for a chatty app. OTOH, if you can keep the device powered down most of the time and just wake up to fetch/report data occasionally, you should be able to get several months of life on battery. [edit] Adafruit says theirs peaks at 250mA, but that's still in the same ballpark. http://www.adafruit.com/product/2471 http://www.adafruit.com/product/2471