Ananthan's Blog

If you are a geek, then you definitely want to mess with everything to create something cool out of it. What about controlling all of your appliances from your computer or from your smart phone wirelessly? Set timer for light when you go to sleep; autonomously switch your fan on when temperature exceeds; and when you are too lazy to get up from your bed to switch fan/light off. All you need is an ESP8266 with a couple of other components that cost <10$. Kind of lazy to always go and switch OFF the lights/Fans especially when sleepy :-). So 3 days straight and it's done... 2 days is spend to understand and change the firmware of WiFi chip ESP 8266. (You can add an extra micro controller along with ESP 8266, but what's the fun in it? ) Made ESP 8266 ES01 chip to act as a TCP server and also to control the Relay circuit (Changed the firmware and programmed it). Control messages are interpreted and necessary signals are passed to the Relay circuit. AC to DC converte...

ESP8266 is a cheap WiFi chip you can use in your embedded projects. You can communicate the chip using AT commands through UART. You can setup a WiFi hotspot, connect to an existing WiFi network, act as a web server, send data (TCP/UDP). The real fun is that you can reprogram the whole chip and you don't need an other micro controller to control it. The ESP8266 ES1 come with 2 GPIO pins. There are other variants of this chip with more GPIO. This ESP 01 cost around Rs. 250 which is so cheap while comparing with other WiFi modules. One thing to remember is that the device is 3.3 V logic. Do not connect 5V supply or 5V RX/TX pins to the device. Connection ======== VCC       ->       3.3V GND       ->       GND CH_PD   ->       3.3V RX          ->       TX TX          ->       RX If you a...