Tag "esp8285"

The industry has been talking about edge computing for some time now. The idea is to distribute the data storage and intelligence in locations closer to where they are needed and only use external services when absolutely necessary. Centralized cloud services have a series of drawbacks for the IIoT world, being maybe latency and security the bigger ones. Some (a lot of?) companies do not want their data to go outside their facilities and critical systems cannot rely on Internet connection....

Six months ago I was reviewing the AiThinker AiLight, a great looking light bulb with an embedded ESP8266EX microcontroller, driven by a MY9291 LED driver. Just before summer IteadStudio released it's Sonoff B1 [Itead.cc] light bulb, heavily inspired (probably same manufacturer) by the AiLight, at least on the design. Now that IteadStudio has become popular between the home automation community you can also find the Sonoff B1 on global marketplaces like Ebay or Aliexpress for around 13€....

Itead Studio has been releasing interesting gadgets for the Home Automation community based on a low price tag and extreme hackability. You can google “sonoff” (the main brand for Itead Studio home automation devices) to get more than a million hits, including official pages, reviews and lots of hacks. The ubiquitous ESP8266 (or its sibling ESP8285) is the core of all those devices, using WiFi instead of the traditional RF messages, replacing a remote with mobile apps or voice commands....

I was not the first to arrive at the party but since I discovered the ESP8266 I've been enjoying it. Then I stumbled upon the Sonoff and dude was I amazed. They are cheap and so very hackable you cannot help buying them, tear them open and customize them. Sure they are not CE or UL compliant, yet. My previous post about adding a custom RF module to a Sonoff HT got some visibility as it was published at hackaday....