ESP8266 Community Forum

Has anybody found a keyfob (or similar) with an embedded ESP8266, ideally with enough access to pins to re-flash it? Or tried putting an ESP8266-01 in a keyfob shell?

I'm currently using standard RF keyfobs talking to a receiver with serial out (to an ESP826, ESP32 or whatever), but it would be great to put some local intelligence in the keyfob itself.

Any suggestions welcome - of a commercial device to hack or of a viable "empty shell".

Cheers
Sean

Key fob: no, USB thumb drive form factor: yes.

The main issue is that putting an ESP8266 into a (RF tag) key fob is just not feasible: an ESP needs a lot of power (3.3V@350 - 500mA) and there's not really a battery small enough to both fit in a fob and able to supply the necessary juice
And powering it off the millivolts from the coil that a RF tag transmitter generates, is also not really an option (or you must turn it into a QI charger, but then the whole idea behind an RF tag is just gone).

Thanks Quickfix. Point taken about power consumption.

I'm thinking of leaving the device either off or in deep sleep mode, only waking up on a keypress. There will be a delay between the first keypress and a command being sent, but I can live with that. It could even do something like flash an LED until wifi is up.

I'm going to try getting an ESP-01 into a casing like this... https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/remote-control-fobs/4510668

Years ago I experimented with deep sleep, waking with RST and/or EN, etc. butt not in great depth. If anybody can suggest an optimal arrangement for low power consumption asleep with reasonably fast wake-up, I would love to hear about it!

Cheers

If anybody can suggest an optimal arrangement for low power consumption asleep with reasonably fast wake-up, I would love to hear about it!

Have a look at this:- Aggressively Low Power with the ESP8266

Be nice if you report back if you have some success.