The new ESP8266 WIFI models
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I have not been testing range everything in my house is within 15 meters.
See the Battery Sensor v 1.0 PCB thread for more idea's on how to improve the range you get.
@clippermiami initially also got also about 10 meters but eventually could
see the sensor module all the way out in the yard at the far end of the house, through outside walls and a half dozen interior walls.
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While wifi might be overkill for sensor communication, a wifi gateway would be useful. Reading various bits around the net, it kooks like it might be possible to actually re-flash the unit itself and tap into some of the GPIO pins directly, so there's a possibility that the device itself could be the only component in a sensor, that would make it potentially a more attractive option for certain situations.
I just received a few yesterday, but I'm not sure when I'll have enough time to try to get anything working with them.
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That's insane..
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Odd little unit. Much higher OTA speed than the nRF24, but throttled through a slower serial interface. Uses a much wider spectrum, but hopefully for a short time. Seems like overkill for our short packets. I wonder what the datagram collision rate would be for UDP? There are a lot of WiFi networks in range where I live.
Still, it's an amazingly cheap chip, considering how much more sophisticated it is than the nRF24L01+ (or even a nRF51822).
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@ServiceXp
Just received a few, and will start messing with them while on holidays... I've seen progress on a few threads out there.
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@ServiceXp, I've created ESP8266 library similar to MySensor library. I'm using V0.9.2.2 firmware. Because in firmware are some typos library will probably work only with this firmware. I've implemented couple of sensors with this module. Distance range of ESP8266 module is much better than NRF24l01, but also power consumtion is much bigger.
Sources are on GitHub.--
EasyIoT framework http://iot-playground.com -
@ServiceXp, I've created ESP8266 library similar to MySensor library. I'm using V0.9.2.2 firmware. Because in firmware are some typos library will probably work only with this firmware. I've implemented couple of sensors with this module. Distance range of ESP8266 module is much better than NRF24l01, but also power consumtion is much bigger.
Sources are on GitHub. -
@ServiceXp in spec is 215mA, which is more than 10x as NRF24L01 current consumption. I didn't measure current, but my configuration did't work with FDT power supply. I'm using additional AMS1117 regulator to power ESP8266 and Arduino.
But ESP8266 can be put in sleep mode, and current consumption is much lower. I plan to add sleep support in ESP8266 EasyIoT library. -
I got a few ESP-03 modules the other week and last night got the MQTT client running on one of them.
Was able to turn on/off a led and detect state change of another I/O pin.Really impressive little modules!
I have messed about with them too, but it seems for me they are not-ready-for-primetime, but with some hard-knocking effort you can get it to do some basic things. Smart guys will develop a great library and it will all come together, I am sure.
Spark Core is my new favorite. After sitting on the bench from last year's initial shipment, I finally got to play with it. It is amazing with its tremendous out of the box capabilities.
The Photon (which ships april) is only US$19, has 1 Mb of FLASH and 128 Kb of RAM, moving at 120Mhz... wow! Way overkill for a motion sensor, but it brings a lot of life to the world of Home Automation for a small price. ($10 for a surface mount version!!!)
I'm in the process of moving my Vera auxiliary controller project over to spark... I'll re-post the wireless version as soon as I can get it in a proper box.
