

A Look at Embedded WiFi Development Boards - hlfshell
https://blog.fusiondigital.io/the-internet-of-things-a-look-at-embedded-wifi-development-boards-7abee1311711?source=your-stories

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gh02t
One 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
Three pieces of wire makes a harness that removed the hassle and takes 2
minutes to crimp.

~~~
gh02t
I'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.

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dperfect
> [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.

~~~
hlfshell
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?

~~~
jasonlaramburu
What is the provisioning process (aka pairing) like for the ESP8266? Can it be
modified?

~~~
jbuzbee
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.

------
No1
> 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
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.

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vectorjohn
Look 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)

~~~
nfriedly
Yea, 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
Yeah, 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.

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BostonEnginerd
I'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
Yeah, 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
You 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.

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alkonaut
What 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
I 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)

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jwatte
You can do worse than defaulting to the ESP8266. Very cheap, good tool chain
available, simple component infrastructure.

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jordz
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

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nfriedly
If you're interested in a NodeMCU board, I'd recommend this one:
[http://www.electrodragon.com/product/nodemcu-lua-
amica-r2-es...](http://www.electrodragon.com/product/nodemcu-lua-
amica-r2-esp8266-wifi-board/)

~~~
gh02t
The 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)

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unclesaamm
What's the situation like for HTTPS in the embedded world?

~~~
nemik
No big deal, you can make it work. axTLS is a pretty lightweight TLS
implementation that you could strap to your TCP framework and make it work
fine. It's also BSD-licensed so you can put it in proprietary stuff.

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lmf4o
i 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
> 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
The 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

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jdthomas
Nice summary.

I recently picked up an ESP8266 for a project, but yet to start farting around
with it. Excited to find some spare time.

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skimmas
Just recieved today a cactus micro rev.2 . Arduino+wifi+recognized as
mouse/keyboard.

Pretty crazy little board.

