Testing IOT-playground
Objective
Find a set of working IOT applications as a learning aid and base for customisation.
Many examples there use an Arduino that uses an ESP8266 as an AT serial modem -
I have had very mixed results with the programming of stand alone ESP8266 - lots of failing drivers of favourite chip sets.
The dedicated Arduino code examples from around the net all seem to work as promised.
But move to Lua and ESP stand alone code when mature
Method
IOT-playground provide the software for a Raspberry Pi to act as a web server controlling and reporting the output of a network of IOT devices
(You are not dependent on a cloud service (that may shut down when all the set up work has been done!)
Links
IOT-playground
Program the AT firmware into an ESP8266 using the Mac IOS
( my use of Windows XP within VMWare seems to be very slow)
I now use esptool within a terminal session on the iMac
A reminder for next time -
download esptool-master.zip and expand in a Mac folder - mine was -
/Users/graham/Dropbox/Arduino/esp8266/IOT_playground/
plug in the USB to serial modem used to program the Arduino and the ESP8266
to find the name of the port do -
cd /dev
ls
at the top of the tty list I saw
tty.usbserial-A501UV1D
The Mac could not see the esptool.py at first so I did
chmod 777 esptool.py
and that gave it full permission.
Deep inside the esptool.py file add the default usb port just discovered.
parser.add_argument(
'--port', '-p',
help = 'Serial port device',
default = '/dev/tty.usbserial-A501UV1D') <<<<<HERE
Set up the ESP8266 (for ESP-01 version) in program mode (port 0 to ground - hold it - reset to ground -release both)
(port 15 to ground as well on the big ones - not yet tested or needed here - save these for stand alone controllers?)
Now program the ESP8266 -
sudo ./esptool.py write_flash 0x000000 v0.9.2.2.bin
v0.9.2.2.bin was found by a web search since the IOT-playground site says to use it and it uses 9600 baud.
I tried a more recent one that used a faster baud rate but could not get it to change down to 9600
My copies for backup
more to come. . . .
Please email me if you want to swap notes