The new ESP8266 WIFI models

[Yveaux]

Please be aware that official documentation of these modules is very limited and there (currently) is no Arduino support for it.
There is however an active community (http://www.esp8266.com/) trying to figure out how these chips work.

[Zeph]

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).

[RJ_Make]

Anyone had a chance to mess around with this module?

[BulldogLowell]

@ServiceXp

Just received a few, and will start messing with them while on holidays... I've seen progress on a few threads out there.

[EasyIoT]

@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.

[RJ_Make]

@dopustko How much more is the power consumption?

[EasyIoT]

@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.

[lunarok]

Hi,

Someone has get any success making a gateway with an ESP8266 ?

[gregl]

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!

[BulldogLowell]

@gregl

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.