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When will this sort of thing become affordable? The wireless card is 50GBP+VAT and the board it plugs in to is 20. thats > $150 to control an LED wirelessly w

by fr0sty 14y ago

When will this sort of thing become affordable? The wireless card is 50GBP+VAT and the board it plugs in to is 20. thats > $150 to control an LED wirelessly which is only a little bit insane. I'd love to throw together little 'internet of things' projects here there and everywhere but the per-unit cost just doesn't allow it.

Evbn 14y ago
When 10K people sponsor an kickstarter, it will be under $100 and sold in SkyMall.
jgrahamc 14y ago
Well, his whole thing is over engineered. He doesn't need a PIR sensor (the LEDs can just be on all the time), he doesn't need RGB addressable LEDs (he can just connect an LED to a GPIO port with a resistor). He also doesn't need a computer with the power to handle a web server. So, what you need is a machine that has WiFi connectivity plus GPIO plus a few components. I'd suggest that you can do this with a Raspberry Pi plus a small WiFi adapter. Using Amazon.co.uk pricing: Raspberry Pi Model B: £42.89 Raspberry Pi Power Supply: £3.95 Edimax WiFi Adapter: £8.15 Some LEDs + resistors (est.) £2.00 ---------------------------------- £56.99 Which is $90. Of course, if you have any of these things (like an old USB WiFi adapter) you can cut the cost further. Or you can do as I do (see link above) and reuse old equipment. My bus monitoring project was done for the cost of the LED display from SparkFun ($12.95). And the Pi has a lot of power to do other stuff. I have other ambient stuff in my house running off a single Raspberry Pi plus it's doing CCTV motion detection as well.
- pedrocr 14y ago
  If you have some other machine on which to install a simple daemon you could just use one of these for $35 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10822 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10822 It's a low-power WiFi client with a bunch of IO that you can configure to periodically do a TCP call to some server you own to get orders on what to do. If you don't mind having it always on you can invert that and have the server initiate the call. You lose the ultra-low power usage in that case. I've been evaluating it to create sensor/actuator networks and it's been great so far. It also has a serial port so your display example would work as well. It's amazing that a full computer (the raspberrypi) can come so close to this on price but the raspberry is an energy guzzler compared to this and for anything you want to battery power that's a big deal.
- fr0sty 14y ago
  While $90 is an improvement I think we need to get closer to $20 for things to get really interesting.

by fr0sty 14y ago

Evbn 14y ago

When 10K people sponsor an kickstarter, it will be under $100 and sold in SkyMall.

jgrahamc 14y ago

Well, his whole thing is over engineered. He doesn't need a PIR sensor (the LEDs can just be on all the time), he doesn't need RGB addressable LEDs (he can just connect an LED to a GPIO port with a resistor). He also doesn't need a computer with the power to handle a web server. So, what you need is a machine that has WiFi connectivity plus GPIO plus a few components. I'd suggest that you can do this with a Raspberry Pi plus a small WiFi adapter. Using Amazon.co.uk pricing: Raspberry Pi Model B: £42.89 Raspberry Pi Power Supply: £3.95 Edimax WiFi Adapter: £8.15 Some LEDs + resistors (est.) £2.00 ---------------------------------- £56.99 Which is $90. Of course, if you have any of these things (like an old USB WiFi adapter) you can cut the cost further. Or you can do as I do (see link above) and reuse old equipment. My bus monitoring project was done for the cost of the LED display from SparkFun ($12.95). And the Pi has a lot of power to do other stuff. I have other ambient stuff in my house running off a single Raspberry Pi plus it's doing CCTV motion detection as well.

pedrocr 14y ago
If you have some other machine on which to install a simple daemon you could just use one of these for $35 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10822 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/10822 It's a low-power WiFi client with a bunch of IO that you can configure to periodically do a TCP call to some server you own to get orders on what to do. If you don't mind having it always on you can invert that and have the server initiate the call. You lose the ultra-low power usage in that case. I've been evaluating it to create sensor/actuator networks and it's been great so far. It also has a serial port so your display example would work as well. It's amazing that a full computer (the raspberrypi) can come so close to this on price but the raspberry is an energy guzzler compared to this and for anything you want to battery power that's a big deal.
fr0sty 14y ago
While $90 is an improvement I think we need to get closer to $20 for things to get really interesting.