ESP8266 Community Forum

- Wed Sep 13, 2017 8:12 pm #69967 I am a mobile app developer this will be my very first ESP8266 project. I need help getting started with what boards and equipment I will need to buy.

I have some blinds that I need to open an close via Wifi and Bluetooth (we will let the user choose). These blinds are already controlled by 12v DC motors. I need to control from 1 - 4 motors. I will have a basic mobile app that has a slider on it and when the user slides the control to the right, the motors will run one way to open the blinds, when they slide it to the left it will close the blinds.

So I need to be able to control up to 4 motors independently and I have to run them forwards and backwards. Also, I will need to somehow know when the blinds are all the way open or all the way closed, so I know when to shut the motors off.

Any help, guidance, I am especially looking for what components I need to buy that will have the easiest setup. My client installs these blinds, so an installer will need to be able to set this up and help the end user get connected via the wifi or bluetooth.

Maybe you tell me that ESP8266 isn't the right way to go, maybe I should be looking at Arduino or Raspberry Pi. I don't know, such a Noob. Any and all help is appreciated.

All this while keeping cost down, so if I can keep each set up below $40-50, I think the client might go for it.

Thanks in advance and I look forward to joining the ESP8266 community.

Thanks,
Jonathan

- Thu Sep 14, 2017 12:51 pm #69980 Hi Jonathan,

for switching on/off 1-4 motors running left/right something like a Rasperry Pi is really oversized.
If you want to use Wifi an arduino would require a Wifi-shield or a you would need something like an ESPruino which costs more than a ESP8266-module.

How much space does your customer have to place the ESP8266-hardware into it?

If he has at least space of a size like a cube of 3inches I recommend a nodeMCU-board for breadboards which has Pins in the standard 0,1inch-distance and where the ESP8266-module is soldered on a PCB which has a virtual USB-COMport connector.

Things become a bit easier to switch on/off 4 to 8 channels if you use a ESP8266-board that has around 12 IO-pins available like the ESP8266 12F-module. Anyway if you use I2C-IO-extension-chips you could even use a ESP8266-01-module.

Some questions:
What will be the fastest frequency you want to switch on/off? I estimate one switch-action per second.

Does your customer want to have a fancy web-interface? If yes I would recommend adding an SD-card
to the system to store all the html-code in SD-card.

For a small webinterface the inbuild flash-rom will be sufficient.

ESP8266-coding that makes use of the WiFi-functions should be programmed in an eventdriven stile.
procedural coding leads to intermettant and unpredictable crashes which results in rebooting of the system.

So if you don't like coding in an eventdriven style you should choose a completely different solution.

I have experienced these crashing in my own coding lately. I'm also a noob how to realise this eventdriven coding style in Lua. I will start a thread about this eventdriven coding next

If you post some more details I can answer more specific.


best regards
Stefan