Book Image

Internet of Things with ESP8266

By : Marco Schwartz
Book Image

Internet of Things with ESP8266

By: Marco Schwartz

Overview of this book

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the network of objects such as physical things embedded with electronics, software, sensors, and connectivity, enabling data exchange. ESP8266 is a low cost WiFi microcontroller chip that has the ability to empower IoT and helps the exchange of information among various connected objects. ESP8266 consists of networkable microcontroller modules, and with this low cost chip, IoT is booming. This book will help deepen your knowledge of the ESP8266 WiFi chip platform and get you building exciting projects. Kick-starting with an introduction to the ESP8266 chip, we will demonstrate how to build a simple LED using the ESP8266. You will then learn how to read, send, and monitor data from the cloud. Next, you’ll see how to control your devices remotely from anywhere in the world. Furthermore, you’ll get to know how to use the ESP8266 to interact with web services such as Twitter and Facebook. In order to make several ESP8266s interact and exchange data without the need for human intervention, you will be introduced to the concept of machine-to-machine communication. The latter part of the book focuses more on projects, including a door lock controlled from the cloud, building a physical Bitcoin ticker, and doing wireless gardening. You’ll learn how to build a cloud-based ESP8266 home automation system and a cloud-controlled ESP8266 robot. Finally, you’ll discover how to build your own cloud platform to control ESP8266 devices. With this book, you will be able to create and program Internet of Things projects using the ESP8266 WiFi chip.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
14
Index

Hardware configuration


We are first going to see how to configure the hardware to use the ESP8266 board. This is how to connect the different components:

  1. Basically, you need to connect your breadboard power supply VCC and GND to the ESP8266 VCC and GND. Also, connect the GND pin of the FTDI converter board to the ESP8266 GND.

  2. Then, connect TX from the FTDI board to RX of the ESP8266 board, and then RX to TX.

  3. Finally, connect the CH_PD (or CHIP_EN) pin of the ESP8266 board to VCC.

  4. Once this is done, simply put the DHT11 sensor on the breadboard.

  5. Then, connect the left pin to VCC (red power rail), the right pin to GND (blue power rail), and the pin next to VCC to the GPIO pin 5 on your ESP8266 chip. This is the final result, not showing the USB-to-Serial FTDI cables:

    Tip

    Make sure that you've connected everything according to the schematics, or you won't be able to continue. Also make sure that all the switches of your components (FTDI module and power supply) are set to 3.3V, or it will damage your...