2017-11-05, 05:48 PM
Anyone else had a play with esp easy and an Esp8266? Looks very promising.
Confession time first, I zapped the i2c & 1wire pins on a Pi3 yesterday in under the chart table trying to tidy up the wiring for some DS18 thermometers, a B180 barometer and a ADS115 voltage sensor, one wrong move with what shouldn't have been a live wire but was to the batts and that was that - tiny spark and pins gone, at least the Pi still mostly works.
So plan B, leave the Pi safe and sound tucked away then send everything via wifi. Esps are dead cheap - Google came up with Espeasy.
https://www.letscontrolit.com/wiki/index.php/ESPEasy
Up and running quite quickly, brief overview -
Download some software, plug the Esp into a laptop and run an install program which loads new firmware onto the esp, log onto the new Esp hotspot - a web page appers where you can connect to a network like openplotter. Log on to that network and the Esp creates a website where it's easy to connect hardware, send MQTT/UDP etc, loads of options.
So after not too much head scratching now we have a cheapo Esp8266 reading voltage and temperature then sending it out over mqtt. Openplotter turns it into signalk in the mqtt tab.
Looks very promising so far, multiplexing serial data with serial - TTL adaptors next, I had that working just with a basic sketch before so here's hoping!
Confession time first, I zapped the i2c & 1wire pins on a Pi3 yesterday in under the chart table trying to tidy up the wiring for some DS18 thermometers, a B180 barometer and a ADS115 voltage sensor, one wrong move with what shouldn't have been a live wire but was to the batts and that was that - tiny spark and pins gone, at least the Pi still mostly works.
So plan B, leave the Pi safe and sound tucked away then send everything via wifi. Esps are dead cheap - Google came up with Espeasy.
https://www.letscontrolit.com/wiki/index.php/ESPEasy
Up and running quite quickly, brief overview -
Download some software, plug the Esp into a laptop and run an install program which loads new firmware onto the esp, log onto the new Esp hotspot - a web page appers where you can connect to a network like openplotter. Log on to that network and the Esp creates a website where it's easy to connect hardware, send MQTT/UDP etc, loads of options.
So after not too much head scratching now we have a cheapo Esp8266 reading voltage and temperature then sending it out over mqtt. Openplotter turns it into signalk in the mqtt tab.
Looks very promising so far, multiplexing serial data with serial - TTL adaptors next, I had that working just with a basic sketch before so here's hoping!