ESP8266 WiFi IoT Experiments

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This is experiment number 2 in the world of the Internet of Things and the amazing ESP8266 modules. After developing a basic software on the WeMos D1 ESP board (bottom photo), which is Arduino compatible, I built this test rig for the tiny ESP-01 module. This allows programming via a USB-to-serial module and is powered by a modified 3.3 volt converter (on the right). The software was easily ported across and is now sending temperature data to a Google Sheet via a webhook on the IFTTT service (If This Then That).

The ESP-01 only has 2 I/O pins (GPIO), but if serial communication isn't needed that goes up to 4. Using a 2-wire I2C bus seems to be the way to go to add displays, sensors and keypads.

The only problem was that the Arduino ESP libraries on my workshop PC seem to be different to my other PC and causing compile errors. Might need to do a clean reinstall.


ESP-01 Test Rig


WeMos D1 Board

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