Such a project for winter evenings - to still be intellectually active in the second half of my life, while not pushing the subject into serious science and professionalism. I haven't been in practical electronics for very long - enough to know the basics.
Application:
I want to put some sensors in and around the house. Various ones - from locking doors and windows, to checking if the dog or cat is sleeping in the shed to whether someone is roaming "behind the barn" for me or if the water tank is starting to get empty
. I have CCTV but it's not that and night IR lighting is a lot of power - it won't go on batteries. Ultimately the sensors are to run on a Li-Ion 18650 with DC-DC stepdown and an ESP8266 which will be woken up from deep-sleep by a signal from a still running sensor - as this one takes about 0.1mA .
Current status:
At the moment the ESP8266-01 communicates correctly with AT commands via FTDI232 (realterm @ Windows 7), the connection to the AP is established, I can change the IP etc. The module has NOT been updated, I bought 3 pieces for testing. I also supply 3.3V to the selected sensor, not yet connected.
I want to recognise the sensor state change (and/or activate the ESP via GPIO15), send a message via LAN to the RPi and sedate the module until the next wake-up. On the Raspberry-Pi to process (I have no idea with what or how unfortunately) and generate a response - either in the form of a physical activation of e.g. the "alarm light" and bell, or in the form of an executive command to another ESP (e.g. activating a light, activating the unlocking of the cat door if RFID has been used on the sensor in the last 30s etc). I have a poorly stable WAN connection - maybe only as a remote 'view' of events, so all the 'services' fall away, so I need to think of a local solution. I saw a thread about "sockets" - but there someone wanted to do it commercially, had experience and didn't have the doubts as mine. There are a lot of different tutorials on the internet, but they are totally mixed up and usually out of date - both in terms of content and (expired) links, and unfortunately for me they mostly refer to cloud services which for me are out of the question.
Doubts and questions:
I have a problem with which environment to choose. I know that C, Phyton, LUA, Basic and Arduino are available for the ESP8266
I don't know any of these languages, 30 years ago I used to write myself simple tools in BASIC on a ZX Spectrum, I very modestly programmed in Z80 assembler - unfortunately that was a long time ago and in the meantime I didn't use programming languages at all. On the one hand, the latter two are probably the simplest - on the other hand, I guess that both Arduino (IDE?) and Basic, due to the compiler/interpreter, can put unnecessary energy strain on the ESP module. Then there is the issue of availability of tutorials and the question - which updates and with what is best to upload? Unfortunately, it is not clear to me - this has changed a lot since the 8266 came out and gives the impression that some of the information is outdated. Without following it to the beginning, I get lost in this mass of content and don't know which one to look for.
And for this, the "other side" would have to be matched - i.e. some server with a web interface (R-Pi ?) that will handle these events and "respond". Here I am completely out of ideas - maybe there are some LAN "ready-made" ones?
I know I've done a lot of writing and no one will make the decision for me - but maybe they will at least put me on the right track.
Application:
I want to put some sensors in and around the house. Various ones - from locking doors and windows, to checking if the dog or cat is sleeping in the shed to whether someone is roaming "behind the barn" for me or if the water tank is starting to get empty
. I have CCTV but it's not that and night IR lighting is a lot of power - it won't go on batteries. Ultimately the sensors are to run on a Li-Ion 18650 with DC-DC stepdown and an ESP8266 which will be woken up from deep-sleep by a signal from a still running sensor - as this one takes about 0.1mA .
Current status:
At the moment the ESP8266-01 communicates correctly with AT commands via FTDI232 (realterm @ Windows 7), the connection to the AP is established, I can change the IP etc. The module has NOT been updated, I bought 3 pieces for testing. I also supply 3.3V to the selected sensor, not yet connected.
I want to recognise the sensor state change (and/or activate the ESP via GPIO15), send a message via LAN to the RPi and sedate the module until the next wake-up. On the Raspberry-Pi to process (I have no idea with what or how unfortunately) and generate a response - either in the form of a physical activation of e.g. the "alarm light" and bell, or in the form of an executive command to another ESP (e.g. activating a light, activating the unlocking of the cat door if RFID has been used on the sensor in the last 30s etc). I have a poorly stable WAN connection - maybe only as a remote 'view' of events, so all the 'services' fall away, so I need to think of a local solution. I saw a thread about "sockets" - but there someone wanted to do it commercially, had experience and didn't have the doubts as mine. There are a lot of different tutorials on the internet, but they are totally mixed up and usually out of date - both in terms of content and (expired) links, and unfortunately for me they mostly refer to cloud services which for me are out of the question.
Doubts and questions:
I have a problem with which environment to choose. I know that C, Phyton, LUA, Basic and Arduino are available for the ESP8266
I don't know any of these languages, 30 years ago I used to write myself simple tools in BASIC on a ZX Spectrum, I very modestly programmed in Z80 assembler - unfortunately that was a long time ago and in the meantime I didn't use programming languages at all. On the one hand, the latter two are probably the simplest - on the other hand, I guess that both Arduino (IDE?) and Basic, due to the compiler/interpreter, can put unnecessary energy strain on the ESP module. Then there is the issue of availability of tutorials and the question - which updates and with what is best to upload? Unfortunately, it is not clear to me - this has changed a lot since the 8266 came out and gives the impression that some of the information is outdated. Without following it to the beginning, I get lost in this mass of content and don't know which one to look for.
And for this, the "other side" would have to be matched - i.e. some server with a web interface (R-Pi ?) that will handle these events and "respond". Here I am completely out of ideas - maybe there are some LAN "ready-made" ones?
I know I've done a lot of writing and no one will make the decision for me - but maybe they will at least put me on the right track.
