As a little bit of a break from the ongoing TASMOTA series, here are a few links for some light, ESP-related, weekend reading.
- Here’s a rotary encoder project from Squix. Hardware details and code included.
- Here’s an interesting blog from Richard Hawthorn (which you may have already seen featured on Hackaday). Richard has some very interesting ESP8266 projects and shares his board designs as well as the code, so it’s worth having a look around.
- Pete Scargill’s blog is always an interesting read and a reliable source of info not only on the ESP8266 itself, but also issues related to the hardware, software and peripherals (ie:- all of the other toys we all end up playing with along the way). His latest post is about a method of checking ESP8266 reliability using Node-Red and MQTT.
- Last, but not least, here’s a project for a “Smart Shelf”, from Malcolm Yeoman. It uses an ESP8266 and an ultrasonic range-finder to track stock on supermarket shelves. One of the interesting things about Malcolm’s approach is that he presents two completely different ESP8266 (and software) variants for the same project, so be sure to read both parts.
Finally, here’s one just to amuse you. It’s not an ESP8266 project, but a project along the same lines of the ESP relay switching boards which have generated so much discussion in the forums recently (about the relative safety of their designs). This one popped up in the Editor’s Choice newsletter from Instructables (and obviously, when it comes to basic electronics, the Instructables editor is as clueless as the original submitter).
What I’d like to know though, is how the submitter actually did what he did? Take a look at the “$1 AUTOMATIC WATER LEVEL CONTROLLER” project and see how many mistakes you can spot (you’ll need to scroll well down in the comments to see an image of the bottom of the board). I’ll give you a clue for the first one …I’m colour-blind, but not that colour-blind! At any rate, please feel free to ignore the author’s advice that this is a working design for an AC pump.
Have a good one!
