It was a high tech meeting, with electronics flowing out across the tables. Apart from the usual chit-chat, most of the afternoon centred on cheap ESP2866 based chips. We had things like:
- plain ESP2866 boards
- NodeMCU
- Witty Cloud development boards. These are very handy boards and a GREAT way to start playing with ESP2866 tech.
Some of the software used:
- ESP Easy – easy to use web based firmware image for the ESP2866
- Node-Red – MQTT based message handling – runs on a RPi
- Arduino IDE – used to program the above ESP2866 boards
- Grafana – drag and drop web based graphing software – runs on a RPi
- InfluxDB – easy to use DB – runs on RPi
- MQTTfx – Java based MQTT client/dev. tool
Electronics everywhere. Solder irons where running hot!
Witty Cloud Dev board. It comes with a programming base board. Below, it’s been removed to be used on another board.
Plain ESP2866 board soldered onto a breakout board. As it doesn’t come with a programming jack, the board has been plugged into a Witty Cloud dev programmer.
Stephens ESP2866 enhanced Mousetrap. This will send a notification to his mobile when a mouse has been caught.
Grafana tracking room temperature, humidity, light levels and voltage.
If you laser cut a solid wooden sheet very finely, then it can be rolled into different shapes. Someone has written a Inkscape plugin to automate the design. I entered in three values: 100mm wide x 100mm deep x 50mm high, and it spat out DXF files that the laser cutter can then use to cut out the shape.
Here is an action shot of the Raspberry Pi based Macro photography rig
The seismograph has progressed, with a lot more parts printed out. Members can read more on this soon on the SW Maker Forum
