For enclosures, someone recently posted a link in the "projects" section to an eBay seller of battery-powered phone chargers as a good, low cost source of ready-made enclosures of the general size and shape that would be useful for small ESP8266 projects. That sounded like a good idea to me, as those chargers also have some electronics and hardware which could also be re-used (battery clips, USB-charger electronics and connectors).
CptanPanic wrote:So this chip wants me to buy tons of them, and put them all over my house. But then I started thinking about how to power them. Ideally we need a small 120VAC power supply with some extra room to put the hardware. Barring that, anyone know of a some cheap 120VAC power supplies from aliexpress or such that would work with the esp?
I have purchased a bunch of these I want to test out. it looks like it puts 4v out, so that likely needs to be taken care of. viewtopic.php?f=11&t=2309
CptanPanic wrote:So this chip wants me to buy tons of them, and put them all over my house. But then I started thinking about how to power them.
- You have much, much choice in cheap ready-made (and legal) AC to 5v USB power supplies, then you just need a 3v3 regulator close to the ESP8266. That's the route I'd go.
- if your house has some sort of DC standby or emergency power (eg 12 battery for alarm, pumps, etc) you could wire to that, again with local 3v3 regs at the device.
of course, lots of choices for case. I haven't got a favourite yet.