ESP8266 Community Forum

- Mon Jun 12, 2017 1:50 pm #67046 Hiya, I am quite old and as such don't lean new "tricks" as well as I did a decade or two ago. I have an idea for a project which requires a wifi enabled micro controller, well two actually, with the ability to

send push notifications
read 2 or more resistive values
read 2 or more external switches
operate a relay or silicon switch alternative

and if possible

be capable of 2 way communication with another identical board
be capable of 2 way communication over the internet through an app

I started off looking at the micro Arduino boards and then the ESP for its wifi and have had several people ask if I had looked at python as a language to learn. So when I saw python being developed for the ESP it has made me wonder whether the ESP could just be used as an SBC in its own right for something like this whilst running python allowing me to do away with the Arduino completely

From a processing power point of view this project would require practically nothing as its a real time monitoring of the resistive and switch inputs for an alarm application. But I have absolutely no idea about program sizes having never attempted anything like this before. So I thought I would ask the question before spending money on items that might turn out to be unsuitable for the application

Many thanks in advance for anyone who can help me with this

Cheers

Mike

- Mon Jun 12, 2017 3:44 pm #67052 An ESP-8266 on its own would be more than adequate for your task and you can even program it like a "Normal" Arduino (see our Arduino subforum).
I've never used Python, but in theory any language with a compiler for the ESP can be used.

Welcome to the funtastic and fascinating world of the ESP-8266.

Assumption is the mother of all f*ckups. At least: that's what I'm assuming.

- Mon Jun 12, 2017 5:19 pm #67060 Hi, yes to all the items with a note that the ESP8266 only has one ADC but you could I2C something like an ADS1115.

I've made some note / observations on another forum that might help you:

http://www.diychristmas.org/vb1/showthr ... #post83508

http://www.diychristmas.org/vb1/showthr ... #post83717

http://www.diychristmas.org/vb1/showthr ... #post84495

- Mon Jun 12, 2017 7:04 pm #67071 @QuickFix

Cheers also, I have to admit I started looking into microcontrollers for one specific project which I thought they would be perfect for. But having never used one before my first experiments on an Arduino uno and Chinese Arduino mini have caused an avalanche of other ideas for things to also try lol

These things really seem to have an unlimited scope of applications where you can almost do anything you can think of with them it seems

But I will be trying my best to stick to specific goals like getting my alarm project just to work with wires and a relay first before attempting wifi and then not trying anything else until I have completed this first project and so on to avoid being endlessly distracted and never actually completely finishing anything which I can see could be a distinct possibility

But I really wish I had looked into these a decade or more ago now I can see their potential. But sadly a time machine is one of the projects they cant quite pull off I suspect lol