Book Image

ESP8266 Robotics Projects

By : Pradeeka Seneviratne
Book Image

ESP8266 Robotics Projects

By: Pradeeka Seneviratne

Overview of this book

The ESP8266 Wi-Fi module is a self-contained SOC with an integrated TCP/IP protocol stack and can give any microcontroller access to your Wi-Fi network. It has a powerful processing and storage capability and also supports application hosting and Wi-Fi networking. This book is all about robotics projects based on the original ESP8266 microcontroller board and some variants of ESP8266 boards. It starts by showing all the necessary things that you need to build your development environment with basic hardware and software components. The book uses the original ESP8266 board and some variants such as the Adafruit HUZZAH ESP8266 and the Adafruit Feather HUZZAH ESP8266 . You will learn how to use different type of chassis kits, motors, motor drivers, power supplies, distribution boards, sensors, and actuators to build robotics projects that can be controlled via Wi-Fi. In addition, you will learn how to use line sensors, the ArduiCam, Wii Remote, wheel encoders, and the Gripper kit to build more specialized robots. By the end of this book, you will have built a Wi-Fi control robot using ESP8266.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
Title Page
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Customer Feedback
Preface

Controlling the gripper with Blynk


The gripper can be easily controlled with a simple Blynk app. In the previous few chapters, you have written different code for controlling DC motors with Blynk apps. So, this chapter will only focus on how to control the gripper with the Blynk app.

Creating the Blynk app

The following steps will describe you how to add a Slider widget to your Blynk app:

  1. Tap anywhere on the canvas to open the widget box.
  2. From the widget list, tap on the SLIDER.
  3. Tap and hold the widget to drag it to a new position if you want.
  4. The most important parameter to set is PIN. In the OUTPUT section, select the output as virtual pin, V1.
  5. Replace the maximum value, 255 with 1023.

Software

Listing 7-1 shows the Arduino sketch that can be used to control the gripper with the Blynk app. The functions for controlling the two DC gear motors are not included in the code to only focus on the gripper (servo). Upload the code to the Arduino using the Arduino IDE by connecting the Arduino to your computer...