The Internet of Things (IoT) is an exciting field that proposes to have all the devices that surround us connected to the Internet and interacting with us, but also between each other. It's estimated that there will be 50 billion IoT devices in the world by the year 2020.
On the other hand, the ESP8266 chip is a small, cheap (less than $5), and powerful Wi-Fi chip that is also really easy to program. Therefore, it is just the perfect tool to build inexpensive and nice IoT projects. In this book, you are going to learn everything you need to know on how to build IoT projects using the ESP8266 Wi-Fi chip.
Chapter 1, Getting Started with the ESP8266, will teach all you need to know about how to choose your ESP8266 board and upload your first sketch to the chip.
Chapter 2, First Projects with the ESP8266, will explain the basics of the ESP8266 by making some real simple projects.
Chapter 3, Cloud Data Logging with the ESP8266, will dive right into the core of the topic of the book, and build a project that can log measurement data on the cloud.
Chapter 4, Control Devices from Anywhere, will reveal how to control devices from anywhere in the world using the ESP8266.
Chapter 5, Interacting With Web Services, will show how to use the ESP8266 to interact with existing web platforms such as Twitter.
Chapter 6, Machine-to-Machine Communications, will explain how to make ESP8266 chips talk to each other via the cloud, to build applications that don't require human intervention.
Chapter 7, Sending Notifications from the ESP8266, will show how to send automated notifications from the ESP8266, for example, via text message or email.
Chapter 8, Controlling a Door Lock from the Cloud, will use what we learned so far in the book to build our first application: a door lock that can be controlled remotely.
Chapter 9, Building a Physical Bitcoin Ticker, will use the ESP8266 for a fun project: making a physical display of the current price of Bitcoin.
Chapter 10, Wireless Gardening with the ESP8266, will dive into a more complex, by learning how to automate your garden with the ESP8266.
Chapter 11, Cloud-Based Home Automation System, will show how to build the essential blocks of an home automation system using the ESP8266.
Chapter 12, Cloud-Controlled ESP8266 Robot, will explain how to use the ESP8266 to control a mobile robot from anywhere in the world.
Chapter 13, Building Your Own Cloud Platform to Control ESP8266 Devices, will reveal how to build our own cloud platform for your ESP8266 projects.
For this book, you will need to have the Arduino IDE, which we will use for all the projects of the book. You will learn how to install it and configure it in the first chapter of the book.
The chapters of the book were also written with a progressive complexity, so even if you don't know a lot about Arduino and/or the ESP8266 you will be able to learn as you progress through the chapters. However, previous experience in programing (especially in C++ and/or JavaScript) is recommend for this book.
This book is for those who want to build powerful and inexpensive IoT projects using the ESP8266 Wi-Fi chip, including those who are new to IoT, or those who already have experience with other platforms such as Arduino.
In this book, you will find a number of text styles that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles and an explanation of their meaning.
Code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles are shown as follows: "We can include other contexts through the use of the include directive."
A block of code is set as follows:
void loop() {
Serial.print("Connecting to ");
Serial.println(host);
// Use WiFiClient class to create TCP connections
WiFiClient client;
const int httpPort = 80;
if (!client.connect(host, httpPort)) {
Serial.println("connection failed");
return;
}Any command-line input or output is written as follows:
# cp /usr/src/asterisk-addons/configs/cdr_mysql.conf.sample /etc/asterisk/cdr_mysql.conf
New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, for example, in menus or dialog boxes, appear in the text like this: "Open Boards Manager from the Tools | Board menu and install the esp8266 platform, as shown."
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