ESP8266 Community Forum

- Mon Jan 19, 2015 9:16 pm #7768 Don't feel sorry or guilty. It's worth the money people are willing to pay, and they are.
The project is already open, or ajar at least, since the schematic and BOM can be found on the guy's Hackaday pages:
http://hackaday.io/project/3749-wifi-sh ... -schematic
He'll probably assemble the boards with his own pick and place machine:
http://hackaday.io/project/1219-pick-and-place-machine
I bet he's also built his own oven.

- Tue Jan 20, 2015 9:55 am #7804 Wow - if he's managed to make his own pick and place that's pretty hardcore

- Wed Jan 21, 2015 5:34 am #7853

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/902741881/8266wing-wifi-shield?ref=nav_search
[...] a cheap wifi shield for arduino projects.

kr175 NOK = $23 USD... and that's not including conversion fee. And...

Headers and screw terminals are included but not soldered.

Dude, you're a rich man...

We're going to do a kickstarter, hopefully in April/May

Can't wait to see yours

Hi. I'm the guy making the 8266Wing shield.

There are a few reasons why the headers are not soldered: There are two rows of holes on the board so it can be soldered to fit either the Arduino pin spacing or a standard 0.1" spacing, good for breadboards etc. Some may not want to use the included headers at all, for my WiFi controlled chandelier I used standard headers instead of the stackable headers to save some space. Lastly it gets expensive to mail it with the headers soldered because the postal service charges for much more than the actual weight if it's thicker than 20mm. (There are other rewards where the soldering is included.)

I don't think I have claimed it's cheap, the closest is "low cost", which I think is a fair decription. While it costs much more than the ESP-03 module it's based on, I have not found any other WiFi shields at a lower price. You can buy a module and make it yourself for less, but unless you will have fun doing that or you need many it's probably not worthwhile.

- Wed Jan 21, 2015 7:53 am #7864

Still, it is open hardware so nothing stopping people getting a bunch made locally to reduce costs - or someone in shenzen making a bunch for next to nothing. And as the kickstarter is funded, they will make it and importantly, the software, of which shenzen is not the world master it is in electronics

I think it is a sweet little project, modest but looks good, and at the end we all get some code and hardware designs to see and get ideas from. And maybe it will get cloned and soon we'll see them on aliexpress etc for just a few $.

So we all win!

I wouldn't actually mind seeing cheap clones on Aliexpress. I'm sure someone will make a shield using the 8266 and sell it at a price I couldn't possibly compete with anyway. If they clone my board instead of someone elses I would get a kick out of that..