esp8266 – We Saw a Chicken …

I’m talking at the Raspberry Pi Toronto Meetup tonight, and if all goes well, the Net-Connected Cowbell will make an appearance:

My slides: MQTT.odp

Links:

MQTT – http://mqtt.org/
Mosquitto: An Open Source MQTT v3.1/v3.1.1 Broker – https://mosquitto.org/
ESP8266 Overview | Espressif Systems – http://espressif.com/en/products/hardware/esp8266ex/overview
MicroPython – Python for microcontrollers – https://micropython.org/
espressif/esptool: ESP8266 and ESP32 serial bootloader utility – https://github.com/espressif/esptool
adafruit/ampy: Adafruit MicroPython Tool – Utility to interact with a MicroPython board over a serial connection – https://github.com/adafruit/ampy
mqtt-spy – an open source utility intended to help you with monitoring activity on MQTT topics – https://kamilfb.github.io/mqtt-spy/
gpiozero -A simple interface to GPIO devices with Raspberry Pi – https://gpiozero.readthedocs.io/en/stable/index.html
paho-mqtt 1.3.1 : Python Package Index – https://pypi.python.org/pypi/paho-mqtt
BlueLine PowerCost Monitor parser for Arduino – CapnBry/Powermon433: ATmega (Arduino) decoding of EM100B and PowerCost Monitor – https://github.com/CapnBry/Powermon433

That picture might not look much, but it’s doing something rather wonderful. It’s a tiny ESP8266 BASIC script running on a super-cheap ESP8266 wifi module. The code draws a clock that’s synced to an NTP server. ESP8266 BASIC graphic commands are built from SVG, so anything you can draw on the screen can also be saved as a vector graphic:

The runtime includes a simple textarea editor that saves code to the board’s flash:

(and yes, that first line is all you need to set up NTP sync)

Among other features, ESP8266 BASIC has a simple but useful variable display:

I’d picked up a (possible knock-off of a) WeMos D1 ESP8266 board in Arduino form factor a few months ago. The Arduino.cc Software now supports ESP8266 directly, so it’s much easier to program. Flashing the BASIC code to the board was very simple, as I’d noticed that the Arduino IDE printed all of its commands to the console. All I needed to do was download an ESP8266 BASIC Binary, and then run a modified Arduino upload line from the terminal:

~/.arduino15/packages/esp8266/tools/esptool/0.4.9/esptool -vv -cd nodemcu -cb 921600 -cp /dev/ttyUSB2 -ca 0x00000 -cf ESP8266Basic.cpp.bin

ESP8266 BASIC starts in wireless access point mode, so you’ll have to connect to the network it provides initially. Under Settings you can enter your normal network details, and it will join your wifi network on next reboot. I just hope it doesn’t wander around my network looking for things to steal â€¦

Tag: esp8266

MQTT Talk tonight

ESP8266 BASIC is seriously neat!