ESP8266/ESP32

The ESP8266 is a low-cost Wi-Fi microchip, with a full TCP/IP stack and microcontroller capability, produced by Espressif Systems in Shanghai, China. This small module allows microcontrollers to connect to a Wi-Fi network and make simple TCP/IP connections using Hayes-style commands. However, at first, there was almost no English-language documentation on the chip and the commands it accepted. The very low price and the fact that there were very few external components on the module, which suggested that it could eventually be very inexpensive in volume, attracted many hackers to explore the module, the chip, and the software on it.

ESP32 is a series of low-cost, low-power system on a chip microcontrollers with integrated Wi-Fi and dual-mode Bluetooth. It is a successor to the ESP8266 microcontroller. The ESP32 series employs either a Tensilica Xtensa LX6 microprocessor in both dual-core and single-core variations, Xtensa LX7 dual-core microprocessor or a single-core RISC-V microprocessor and includes built-in antenna switches, RF balun, power amplifier, low-noise receive amplifier, filters, and power-management modules.

Check out some of our projects/custom builds to get inspired.

Projects

Mini Weather Station

This is a small Weather Station based on the ESP8266, and will only need a small spot on you study table or workbench to place it.

Dice Roller

If you plan on playing any board/dice related games like ludo, build this project. You will need a continuous rotation servo, an arcade button and a arduino nano or ESP8266 board. But if you plan to make your dice roller touchless, use a web app hosted on the ESP8266 board.

Environmental Monitoring Rover

Build a Rover with Sparkfun ESP8266 Thing Development Board to monitor temperature, humidity, gas readings and upload them to Cayenne for reference.

IR Break Beam IFTTT Sensor Node

If you are into home automation or just starting with home automation, then this is a simple project to undertake. Basically as part of this project, we are putting together IR break Beam based IFTTT node, which sends a message to the IFTTT cloud based on which you can trigger events, like send you a text message, email , turning on the lights in your home etc, when the IR beam is broken.