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Category Archives: ESP8266

IoT enabled lawn mower

Posted on June 11, 2015 by R-B Leave a comment

Michel from Quebec, Canada recently bought a EGO brand battery powered lawn mower to which he added an ESP8266 module along with a PIC MCU and a couple of hall sensors to make it an IoT-enabled mowing device that is now capable of sending tweets during its mowing session. To make sure I would not void my mower’s warranty I’ve used 2 Hall Effect sensors and a few magnets: one on the bail switch, five on a wheel. Three revolution of a rear wheel represent a distance of 245cm (~96½”). There are 10 spokes on the back of the wheel.

MAX7219 LED display driver for ESP8266

Posted on June 10, 2015 by R-B Leave a comment

Here is an Instructable on writing a MAX7219 driver for interfacing an 8-digit seven segment LED to ESP8266 platform. The MAX7219 are compact, serial input/output common-cathode display drivers that interface microprocessors (µPs) to 7-segment numeric LED displays of up to 8 digits, bar-graph displays, or 64 individual LEDs. Included on-chip are a BCD code-B decoder, multiplex scan circuitry, segment and digit drivers, and an 8×8 static RAM that stores each digit. Only one external resistor is required to set the segment current for all LEDs. A convenient 4-wire serial interface connects to all common µPs. Individual digits may be addressed

ESP8266 MP3 decoder

Posted on June 9, 2015 by R-B Leave a comment

This Github upload shows an example of how to use the I2S module inside the ESP8266 to output sound. In this case, it is used to output decoded MP3 data (actually, more accurately: MPEG2 layer III data): the code described here basically is a webradio streamer which can connect to an Icecast server, take the MP3 data the server sends out, decode it and output it over the I2S bus to a DAC. The MP3 decoder has been tested for bitrates up to 320KBit/s and sample rates of up to 48KHz. The biggest part of this code consists of a

SubPos: A non-GPS based local positioning system

Posted on April 28, 2015 by R-B Leave a comment

SubPos is a WiFi-based local positioning system designed using PIC microcontrollers and ESP8266 modules by Blecky on Hackaday.IO. SubPos is an indoor positioning system that can be used in various environments such as metro lines, shopping malls, carparks, art galleries or conference centers, essentially anywhere GPS doesn’t penetrate. SubPos defines an accurate method for subterraneous positioning in different environments by exploiting all the capabilities of Wi-Fi. SubPos Nodes or existing Wi-Fi access points are used to transmit encoded information in a beacon frame that is utilised for position trilateration.

RGB Graphic Equalizer driven by ESP8266

Posted on April 17, 2015 by R-B Leave a comment

Amir Avni has shared the details of his cool RGB graphic equalizer build, which is controlled by the ESP8266 hardware programmed with the NodeMCU firmware. The RGB LED strings are controlled through WS2812, while the equalizer colors are chosen through a Web interface over Wifi. Two weeks ago I got my ESP8266 Version 12, which is a new version of the ESP8266 micro-controller with more GPIOs, so it seems some nice things can be done with it. If you haven’t heard of the ESP8266 check this older postfrom the blog. Also, I got the MSGEQ7 chip, which is a chip that outputs an analog equalizer from

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