The thing about rushing in with something new is that you tend to bring your learning mistakes with you. Firstly for new readers, why am I fascinated with the Raspberry Pi? Well I’ve been working on IOT for some time now and I’ve tried out many ideas most of which…
Presents from Espressif
Let me start by explaining that Espressif are makers of fine WIFI gadgets.. specifically they have spawned a whole new lease of life for IOT… by producing a marvellous little chip that contains a complete processor, memory and WIFI interface needing only a tiny FLASH memory chip and a couple…
Mosquitto and Web Sockets
This entry is about ThinkStudio (thingstud.io), Web Sockets and Mosquitto in my quest for ESP nirvana. So TODAY I was alerted to an early version of a new service which I think you might like… so check out http://www.thingstud.io/ Clarification: This is ALPHA software but already, provided they keep at…
The DTR Line and ESP
Hitting an issue with ECLIPSE on the PC and the TERMINAL program. So in our little board we’re using an ATTINY85 to control the programming process for the ESP12s… I have some issues.. If you’re using GPIO as an output to a relay… this whole process can cause the relay…
Node-Red Scheduler
I’m Peter Scargill and this is a scheduler for Node-Red (well, more of a timer really but someone surely has already used the term timer) for Node-Red which includes days and months, dawn and dusk with optional offsets and a time-out mode, You may notice this has improved since the…
Making ESP8266 Programming Easier
Updated 09 Apr 2015 – code fix: A little something here from my guest writer and friend Aidan who’s been working with me on the latest home control successes to follow after this blog! If you’ve successfully written and uploaded a piece of C code for the ESP8266 in any…
And now… SMING Framework
As if the LAST announcement about an Arduino development environment wasn’t good enough (if you read my blog I acknowledged that the Arduino IDE was not as good as Eclipse) – there’s an ECLIPSE Arduino environment called Sming Open Source Framework. They’ve not YEY gotten MQTT working apparently but there…
An ESP8266 for Arduino Game Changer?
(updated 2/4/2015) Here we go again – just as you thought it was safe to start coding, another game-changer comes along. This time not only do we have an Arduino IDE for the ESP8266 (which isn’t a stunningly good IDE but it’s awfully familiar to many developers) but also what…
Home Control The Next Step
As regular readers will know I’ve pretty much gotten to grips with the whole home control thing having after much research settled on a largely MQTT-based setup using the excellent new Raspberry Pi2 as a hub with Node-Red. Though it could just as easily have been any proper Linux or…
ESP826 + Pi + MQTT + Node-Red Heaven
If you’ve been following the blog you’ll note I’ve spent a lot of time getting to grips with the Raspberry Pi, Node-Red, the ESP chips using C and of course my earlier home control attempts with NETIO, the NRF24L01 boards and Arduino clones (all of which are working 24/7 –…
ESP01 versus ESP12
And for today’s intriguing question… I’ve been working on the ESP-12 for some time now – the program has never failed to work on power up… today I wanted to put the code back into an ESP-01 as I only wanted to use GPIO0… same code – same kit –…
ESP8266 Start up Crap
I’m pretty pleased with my ESP8266 developments so far. Ditching Lua was a good move as I’m no longer tied for resources… there is however one major annoyance that I’ve not seen a cure for… When you power up the board, in the ESPRESSIF rom there is some setup info…
ESP8266 Tidy PWM
If you check out an earlier post I managed to get PWM working nicely on the ESP-12 on the otherwise unused GPIO15. Well, it was a little messy – so I’ve tidied it up with the use of a struct. Here it is.. You’ll need to make minor mode to…
ESP8266 PWM on One Output
According to the ESP8266 API – you have control over ports 12,13 and 15 for PWM. I’m interested only in using GPIO15 as I have uses for the other port bits – so I took PWM.H and removed reference to the other two ports – leaving only GPIO15. I changed…
ESP8266 SDK v1.0.0 Out Now
The new esp8266 SDK v1.0.0 is out now including various optimisations and a half-decent English manual. How far we have come since only a few short months ago when the code was full of bugs and the English documentation almost non-existent. Today you can get paid to report bugs!! According…
WS2812B LEDS flicker
If you recall my earlier post on the code for handling WS2812B LEDs with an ESP-12 or similar – I’ve been discovering the odd flicker on the first LED – recall I lengthened the reset pulse to get rid of this – well, I was still getting it very occasionally…
Raspberry Pi Remote Root Access
Now some of you will write in no doubt and say how easy this is – how could I possibly not know this. Well, I didn’t. I found out two other things this week – so here’s the lot in one go. SD Card Cloning But before I start, here’s…
NODE-RED Development
While I’m sitting in a hotel in Birmingham waiting to do my bit in this month’s #FSBCONF I thought I’d drop down a few notes about Node-Red which is definitely my new toy of choice when it comes to a central hub for home control. I say toy, sitting on…
LED Quick Test
Quick test of the new ESP8266 code for driving the ws2812b LEDs… not far off 2 amps at 5v in at one end – GND and ESP8266 signal other end… fully tested with 300 serial LEDS – this is my next WIFI SAD LIGHT once I find something with enough…
ESP8266 WS2812B LEDs on a Plate
Well, now that I’ve cracked using the WS2812B LEDs – I guess I’d better share the results – especially as it was the work of others that started me off on this road! I went down a LOT of dead routes with this – firstly I was going to have…