Weekly Challenge – F15 60-223: Intro to Physical Computing

Week 2 Challenge: ESP8266 as IoT node

Thu, 17 Sep 2015 12:41:35 +0000

THE TOPIC: The wonderful new ESP8266 (withits very active and giving community ), is a very viable Internet-of-Things (IoT) helper. In this challenge, we’ll develop instructions for turning this board into a platform for IoT prototyping.

THE CHALLENGE: This week’s challenge is to great a set of instructions and a 1-minute-or-less demonstration video that shows how you can use a a wireless ESP8266 node. Our test case will be to create a network of 3 or more ESP8266, each connected to a sensor (analog or I2C) that can sense human activity around it, and report this activity to a server located in a different place. A completed challenge will include:

1-minute video of a working demo
a Fritzing diagram for the hardware setup of each node and the server
the necessary ESP8266 code and server code.
per-unit-code of each node should be less than $10
each unit should function for at least 1-week, unattended

HINTS: Here are two related project on GitHub and a relevant discussion thread

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Week 1 Challenge – ESP8266 OSC Bridge Demo

Wed, 16 Sep 2015 03:59:38 +0000

After some effort, I have successfully configured the ESP8266 as an AP access point, which also has server capabilities. So once you connect to the AP Wifi with iPhone, you can send OSC message to ESP8266 server port using TouchOSC. Then you can easily relay that message to arduino via serial port in order to control the LED. You can find the Arduino code and more information in my Github repository.

Here is the Fritzing breadborad diagram:

Here is a short demo video:

YouTube / 王乔志 – via Iframely

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Week 1 Challenge: ESP8266 as wireless OSC bridge

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 18:19:00 +0000

THE TOPIC: The wonderful new ESP8266, is “a self contained [and very low-cost SOC with integrated TCP/IP protocol stack that can give any microcontroller access to your WiFi network. ” In other words, the cheapest, smallest and likely easiest way to connect your physical computing projects to the internets. Maker favorite vendors like Sparkfun and Adafruit sell it, you can but it for barely over $2 on ebay, and there is a very active and giving community formed around it with a forum, a wiki and more. We want to make it very easy prototype rapidly with the ESP8266.

THE CHALLENGE: This week’s challenge is to great a set of instructions and a 1-minute-or-less demonstration video that shows how you can use an ESP8266 to send sensor information from an iOS or Android smartphone, to an Arduino Uno, in order to control a physical computing an actuator, using the OpenSoundControl protocol. More specifically:

Research and make reference to available iOS and Android apps (ideally free ones) that allow one to send the phone’s sensor values to another machine, using OpenSoundControl over wireless. A quick google search reveals many options.
Prototype a circuit made up of an Arduino UNO, an ESP8266 and whatever else is necessary, that allows the Arduino to fade and LED based on sensor information from the phone. Document this circuit diagram using Fritzing; create a circuit schematic using Fritzing or Eagle.
Create a 1-minute-or-less video that demonstrates this visually
Create a set of instructions in the form of a post on this blog that contains all of the above, give this post the “Weekly Challenge” category.

HINTS: Here are two related project on GitHub and a relevant discussion thread

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