ESP 8266 Wi-Fi Repeater with Mesh Networking
Very cool. Most of you probably already know this, but the ESP8266 is a glorious microcontroller that costs about $7 in a nice package. It has Wifi and a bunch of GPIO ports, and the newer model ESP32 has bluetooth too. They can be programmed like an Arduino (using Arduino IDE among other tools) and are a really interesting way to get a bunch of very cheap, highly connected things going on.<p>For instance, I have one rigged up across a zone valve on my mom's "dumb" furnace and it's now smart furnace that heats the house up before she wakes up and controls the temperature to whatever tolerance she wants. I have another one running the stepper motor that turns the screw of my $30 DIY star-tracking camera mount. Another is hooked up to a thermocouple that transmits readings from wherever through a MQTT server to processing equipment to characterize oven temperatures, water heaters, or anything else you want to measure. I have other ones hooked to reed sensors that tell my security system when things get opened or closed.<p>The possibilities with this kind of cheap SoC are nearly endless. I love how many fun ideas become really practical (as in, "Ooh, I could set this up right now using my drawer of ESPs! Here I go...") with this kind of thing.