Esp8266 wifi microcontroller dev boards

Discussion
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I finally got round to doing something with my Esp8266 breakout board yesterday evening.
Its a Nodemcu breakout with a usb interface all built in.
Available on ebay from about £5.50. The DHT22 is from about £2.30.
Throw in a micro usb power supply and youve got a temp and humidity sensor for about a tenner or so.

If youve been put of trying these because you dont want to flash the firmware or you think its going to be fiddly then your in for a suprise.
The latest arduino ide has the ability to incorporate support for other dev boards as of ver 1.6.
And is just as easy to use with the ESP8266 breakout boards as any arduino product.

I had the bits sitting on my desk and while i waited for my curry to be delivered I had set up the arduino ide downloaded an example sketch for the DHT22 temp/hunidity sensor, put it on a breadboard, flashed the ESP and had it logging to thingspeak.com before the curry arrived.

It really is as easy as using an arduino.

Im going to try on the little ESP8266 ver1 boards next but that needs an ftdi usb to serial converter hooked up to program it but once flashed i can remove it and the whole assembly will be not much bigger than the end jount on my thumb.
Ill bring it allong to μMeet next week and show how easy it can be done.

Gordon

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You can get the breakout board with Wifi for £5.50?

That’s incredible.

Or have I misunderstood?

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The esp8266 12 on its own is anywhere from about £2.50.
The little dev board in the picture is from about £5.50 including the esp8266 12.

And remember these have wifi onboard as well.
And a massive community behind it now producing tools and examples.

Gordon

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So the dev board is specifically for the WiFi module?

Any preferred seller?

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The wifi is on the little esp8266 boards. Theyre a full system on chip with wifi micro controller.
They all have wifi on board.

The nodemcu dev board just wraps it all up in a really easy to use package to make it easy to program and stick on a breadboard.

You can have them like this on a little break out board and add the serial and power supply. I posted this on slack yesterday.

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But they also come smaller like the other pic i posted.

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Both of those are using the onboard wifi to post data up to thingspeak.
You could make several tiny temp/humidity wifi sensors for very little and place them around anywhere you want to monitor. or any other sensor for that matter.

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Ebay is best bet.
Far east if you dont mind waiting will give best price.
But most of the uk sellers have them either on ebay or Hobbycomponents or coolcomponents for a little more.

What I did was buy a couple from the UK of bare esp8266 and a nodemcu dev board version to try out now and some from the far east for later.

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I wanted to try and do a little demo last week during uMeet but ended up shifting rubbish and working on the doorbot again. If I can get down next Thursday Ill do a little leaving demo of the boards.

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Thanks. Lucas was trying out the temp/humidity sensors last night, then I remembered your post.

Potentially you could just use the WiFi and Sensor with a few cells to power, and have a very small and cheap setup?

But easier with the Arduino IDE compatible board.

I’ll get a few.

The DHT22 says it can have something like 20m cable run. But WiFi is now looking more appealing.

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Theyre a little power hungry but there are sleep modes to make them last longer on battery.
I havnt got round to playing with that yet.

The second picture of the ESP8266 01 with the DHT22 would just need a couple of AA batteries and you have a complete wifi temp/humidity sensor. With the deep sleep stuff turning the processor and wifi off between readings.

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Now that’s impressive hacking:

NTSC signal from a wifi chip :sunglasses:

1 Like
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Good piece on the esp8266 in the latest Make magazine.