ESP8266 Community Forum

I don't know how many people here are in the UK, but as far as I understand it, our "World beating" track 'n' trace system could be substantially improved upon if we all carried pen and paper and wrote down who we saw whilst we are out...

I raise this here because it does seem to me that the ESP modules are an ideal basis for a Track 'n' trace system: the chips can talk to each other and keep a record of the ones they have been near. They can also log into the internet to exchange data.

I don't know how to develop this thought any further, so I thought I would just share it here...

The problem is making them portable. They are very power-hungry (up to 300mA when sending). Since they would need to be always on to work at all, there is no portable battery that would keep them on long enough to be worth having.

In short, the ESP8266 is totally impractical for this purpose and complete non-starter. Sorry!

pangolin wrote:The problem is making them portable. They are very power-hungry (up to 300mA when sending).

Are they?
I ran one as a range extender on a couple of AA cells and it seemed to last reasonably well.

Since they would need to be always on to work at all, there is no portable battery that would keep them on long enough to be worth having.

They would need to be always listening, but they would only need to transmit a short pulse as often as deemed necessary. I don't know how short it could be, nor how often it would need to do it, but I'd think it be pretty short and every few seconds, perhaps more frequently when they're busy.

Define: "reasonably well"