ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi,

I am not quite sure which board this question belongs to: Is it possible to share a folder of my laptop with the ESP8266? I would like the ESP to write sensor data straight to my laptop, over the wireless network at home.

Thanks,
Dan

No, that would be almost impossible - you'd ned to implement a network file system protocol of some sort and that wouldn't fit in the limited memory available.

The best approach would be to set up a server application on your laptop that does the actual writing and then have the ESP connect to the server via the network.

You could build a pretty simple REST API and publish it via an Apache web server, or the standard python web server, or via node.js. Then you could use a web client in the ESP to connect and publish the data.

Alternatively you could use MQTT and connect to a broker somewhere (on your laptop or out on the Internet), and then create an MQTT client on your laptop to receive the messages - then you would have some sort of message persistence when the laptop was not connected.

with minimal effort:
run ftp server on PC, simple ftp client on esp.
ftp allows for creation of new file or append to existing.

Thanks to to both you, for taking time to answer my question!

@davydnorris: I am afraid the first part of your answer exceeds my level of understanding. For the second part: I did successfully use thingspeak in the past, which allows me to receive data on my laptop. But I hoped that there is an easier way of doing it, without the need of a third party service. As your answer seems to suggest that my laptop may serve as as broker, I need to further investigate that solution.

@schufti: 'ftp' may be the keyword I was missing when searching on the web. I see that there are projects that use ftp. This is quite new to me, so I am not yet able to judge whether it suits my needs.

Thanks again and kind regards
Dan