μMeet Thursday 30th July 2015

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#1

Members will be working on their own projects.

This may be my last night so Ill bring along the ESP8266 WiFi boards.
Ive been trying these out with the DHT22 sensors and tiny oled displays.
And using them to post data up to IOT agregation sites like thingspeak.com.
Ill show what Ive done so far and pass on some of the tips ive come across to make these easier to use.

All levels of experience are welcome. If your stuck ask for some help, If youve got something to show and attendees are interested please feel free to show off.

The μMeet box of bits has components and tools for members to use.
Including a basic arduino kit to use.
We are slowly building the collection up.
Recently weve added DHT22 and Neopixels for members to try.

If you have an idea for a more formal show and tell or demonstration, get in touch and we can arrange a date and time for it to happen.

Gordon

μMeet Thursday 6th August 2015
#2

Very keen to get involved in this once I have some spare time. I’ve been working on an rpi/zwave home-alarm system which is functional and relatively effective, I just need to get it packaged up nicely and sort out the remaining electronic bits (I’m a software guy so I’ve got a lot of learning to do on that front).

Will get down there as soon as real life permits - sorry it seems like I’m going to miss meeting you, Gordon.

#3

Thats a shame Keith. Im going to try and get down to the arch when i can but it will probably be just open night after this week.

Ive got these Expressif boards working with a little oled display now.
They look really promissing for this whole Internet of Things approach.
Im putting together some temp/humidity nodes reporting to thingspeak and some displays as well.
Thursday I hope to have a brace of them on a network able to record the temp/humidity and display the results either on the device or on a remote device with no sensors if i get time.

Theres very little extra to do to have these controlling a heating system or switching devices on and off. Its easy to knock up a node for what ever sensor or control device you want.

Im using thingspeak for now but ill probably end up using http://iot-playground.com running on a raspberry pi. This looks like an interesting platform to build on.

Of course this wont be deployed until ive moved into the new house. Wherever that may be.
But i could easily see me deploying a sensor in every room to keep an eye on what the new houses heating system is like and later control it.

#4

Just to satisfy curiosity, I’d really like to know the humidity under the floor…

#5

I could stick one under if you like.
In fact i could put it on the network and leave it there hooked up to thinkspeak if someone wants to create a login on there for the makerspace. It would just need a power supply.
If you want a couple more you can copy it for a few pounds each.

With a bit more time on the power and sleep code they could run off batteries for 6 months or more.

You can set alerts on thingspeak if it goes over a certain value. Or set up others with leak sensors to detect standing water.

#6

I’ve made an account and I’ll PM you the details

#7

Lucas started work on this last week too. He tested out the sensors and I sent him over Gordon’s post about it, and asked him to draw up a shopping list.

I reckon we might need to consider moisture proofing the boards for some of the extreme areas in the Space: sub-floor near electrics being one.

These are cheap enough to sacrifice a few into the permanent infrastructure, such as behind the cladding, and it would be easy enough to just have a usb power cable emerging here and there.

#8

Using ESP8266 as a microcontroller:

#9

Yes, theres a fair few how to’s out there now.
The main repository of knowledge is still esp8266.com.

Ive knocked together a device that can be left under the floor in a little project box.
For some reason i cant flash it on the stripboard but i can unplug the Esp8266 and flash it on a breadboard. Later designs need to be flashed in situ. Or see points 1 and 2 below.
It needs a five volt supply. Ill rip apart a micro usb charger wall wart today to use.
Ill bring it along tonight and we can put it on the network connected to the thingspeak account Tom N set up. It will do the job till something more robust is put together.

There are a couple of interesting developments going on.

1, over the air flashing. Its possible to flash the Esp from a web page on the device itself. There are some members of the Esp forum working on this.

2, webserver based wifi setup. The ability to expose an admin web page to set up the device.
A default network setup that you can access to put it on your network. Also extendable to add other set up pages to add other features. For example, adding your thingspeak account details and field names without having to add them to the code and reflash the firmware.

And remember these devices have a lot more room on them for your code compared to the arduino. So these extra features are easily added to your projects.

#10

Hoping to come down tonight. Would be interested in hearing/seeing what Gordon’s done with the ESPs.

#11

You have a few of these too, Peter?

They seem pretty incredible!

#12

Whats incredible is the comunity thats built up around them.
Expressif who produce these have even employed someone now to develop example applications.
The guy they employed was one of the early developers working out how to use them.
They also released the documentation and official sdk when they saw how popular they had become and recognised this whole new market.

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#13

Busy night 10 members working away round the big table.
Arduino, ESP8266, Music, Hats with marquee text running round.
3d printing parts for projects.

Lots of productivity at the Makerspace tonight.
Gordon

#14

Late stayers still beevering away.

IMAG0037.jpg2688×1520 1.94 MB

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