Awesome 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
A Look at Embedded WiFi Development Boards
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Re: A Look at Embedded WiFi Development Boards
#12Look 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.
Re: A Look at Embedded WiFi Development Boards
#13Just recieved today a cactus micro rev.2 .
Arduino+wifi+recognized as mouse/keyboard.
Pretty crazy little board.
Re: A Look at Embedded WiFi Development Boards
#14> [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…
I 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.
This 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.
Re: A Look at Embedded WiFi Development Boards
#15> [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…
I 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?
What is the provisioning process (aka pairing) like for the ESP8266? Can it be modified?
Re: A Look at Embedded WiFi Development Boards
#16Look 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
That looks pretty good. I've pre-ordered it, can't wait for it to come out so I can play with it.
Re: A Look at Embedded WiFi Development Boards
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
I 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?
What is the provisioning process (aka pairing) like for the ESP8266? Can it be modified?
Depends on the firmware. At least one starts up initially as an access point. You connect to it, hit a web page, enter your network credential, reboot and it's online.
Re: A Look at Embedded WiFi Development Boards
#18> 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, pr…
They 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.
Re: A Look at Embedded WiFi Development Boards
#19If you're interested in a NodeMCU board, I'd recommend this one: http://www.electrodragon.com/product/nodemcu-lua-amica-r2-es...