ESP8266 Community Forum

- Tue Apr 14, 2020 2:24 am #86533 Hi Bonzo,
hope all is good with yout in these trying times. Thanks for trying to help.

I just started playing with board a month ago or so and have used the Arduino IDE and stuff like Tasmota or ESPHome to play with various boards.

I'm so still so ignorant that I'm not understanding why these boards are harder to program than a NodeMCU I still did not have time to fire up the Arduino IDE and try but wouldn't a sketch that manages the WiFi connection and then when it computes the time is right just switched the onboard relais be enough? Probably I'm missing something

- Wed Apr 15, 2020 6:39 am #86552 How do you plan to power your project? If it's going to be battery powered it's better to use a ESP2866 module directly, although that's a bit harder than using a development board like the Node MCU or WeMosD1 mini.

In any case, start out with a development board for prototyping. The WeMos D1 mini is also a good one IMO and it has a relay shield available. It's easy to program as well.

WeMos D1 mini
https://www.wemos.cc/en/latest/d1/d1_mini.html

Relay shield
https://www.wemos.cc/en/latest/d1_mini_ ... relay.html

- Thu Apr 16, 2020 3:55 am #86575 Thank you very much. I really appreciate your kind suggestions.

Cheers from a shutdown Rome Italy hoping things will get better soon.

Take care and keep safe.

- Fri Apr 17, 2020 7:56 am #86600 You're welcome!

Ps. another tip. If you decide to go the WeMos D1 mini route, see this link:

https://github.com/wemos/D1_mini_Exampl ... r/examples

It has examples on how to use the shields. The relay shield is very easy, it's basically just defining the correct pin for the relay as an output, and then driving that pin high or low.

Time can be measured with an RTC (real time clock). There are modules available for this that you could attach, for example the ds3231. These devices keep track of time even when you lose power, they have an external coin-cell battery as a backup. They can also output a square wave signal at a chosen time or interval that can wake up a microcontroller from sleepmode. If you spend a bit of time on google you'll find examples for sure!

Take care and good luck!