ESP8266 Community Forum

- Fri Mar 20, 2015 10:46 am #12331 Esp8266 looks interesting.
I have designed/developed/manufactured embedded controllers since the 90's, microprocessors since the 70's but I retired in 2008. Only assembly language and mostly hardware design for industrial/home automation. I am an inventor with over 8 patents so impossible to be retired from thinking about new ideas.
I just discovered ESP8266 family and find it very interesting.
I have a need for a wireless/low power link of about 30 feet. 30 devices needing to exchange only 32 bits of data when a button is pushed on each device. (once a minute to once an hour).
Cheap, throw away??
I think simple uart/at command interface to a 8 pin microcontroller??

I am asking for suggestions as to which device/module I might be able to interface to and where to purchase.
I need very simple assembly communication (AT?)

Any comments/suggestion/information is appreciated. I am too new here to know what might be obvious to members who have been here for a long time so I apologize for my newbieness !
Ray

- Mon Mar 23, 2015 8:43 am #12478 Ray,
I'm also new to esp8266. Let me start by saying that I have not had much luck yet. I have been doing a bit of research, and since you have some what of a conceptual question, I will attempt to add my thoughts based what I have seen and heard from others experiences.

First, esp8266s are readily available on eBay or aliexpress. The esp-01 seems to be the most common and cheapest version.

Second, you don't NEED to connect it to a micro controller. You could connect your button directly to the esp8266. In order to do that however, you would not use AT commands. You would have to compile custom firmware. If you would prefer to stick with AT commands then you could connect it to a micro controller, but make sure it is a 3.3v version.

Third, you mentioned low power. Different people have different ideas of what low power is. In my opinion, from what I have seen from users, the esp8266 is NOT a low power device. If low power is a real concern then you might want to consider BLE. I have yet to find a BLE module that shares the low cost of the esp8266. The closest thing I have found is a Chinese module (about $7) that uses the nordic nrf51 chip. This chip is meant to last about a year on a coin cell battery. The only online community for support that I have found is for the official dev kit (about $100). I haven't found anything to help with the Chinese module. And thus, it has a steeper learning curve.

I hope this helps, and maybe others who have more practical experience will chime in.

Good luck.

- Mon Mar 23, 2015 10:47 am #12489 I too have used MCU's for years.
I am very unimpressed with AT commands. Sure AT commands are good for a human keyboard interface but for a MCU interface they are cumbersome...they are textual ( commands and responses vary in length) and go via an asynchronous UART interface..parsing them is not pleasant but it can be done.

The alternative is if you have a windows OS, is to set up the eclipse IDE and work in c and compile and load code into the esp8266 directly.
Another alternative is lua (a script language). The lua interpreter costs space within the esp8266 and any major project is likely not to fit.
Lua is nice for experimenting since changes to elementary projects can be made easily.

Stay away from the esp01 the esp07 and esp12 have more pins available and any major synchronous interface with the esp8266 ( Ex SPI I2C) will need them.
Esp01 and esp07 aren't that much different in price.

- Wed Mar 25, 2015 8:54 pm #12635 My need is very simple.
two buttons, one led.
button one turns on power, blinks led and sends a 8 bit id to a lan pc running a custom VB program.
button two turns off power/led right after sending a 8 bit code.
Maybe 40 boxes in a 400 sq ft area.
Was going to do with IR but cheap rf would bypass position problems.
Thanks,
Ray