How about Wifi Nodes?

[gaute]

Hi all!
I had a hard time sleeping one night, so I started working on a new project. It is not a RFM69 based project, so a bit of-topic, but I think some of you might find it interesting..

As the subject says: I'm trying to change the RFM chip with a cheaper ESP8266 Wifi chip. The idea is to keep most of the design that computerist made, but skip the GW completely, and make the node communicate with the MQTT broker directly.
For me this has a few advantages:

• Cheaper, the ESP is about half the price of an RFM module.
• Fewer devices - more reliable?
• More control - like being able to reset the arduino with the ESP GPIO port.

This is still at an early stage, but let me know what you think, and I will post some progress posts later.

G

[greginkansas]

I have looked at them also
www.gearbest.com/boards-shields/pp_320937.html

[ragoth]

Hi Gaute,
looking forward to see your article on this approach.
Best regards, Ragoth

[sam4205]

I also looked at that option however decided to stay with rfm69. Wifi is good for areas where there are gypsum based walls and low density. I moved to Asia and here we have concrete walls with lots of metal around it. This doesn't give good range for wifi and sub ghz rfm is the best option.

For sure wifi is easier to build and manage and also cheaper than rfm. But range is more important to make the system usable.

Sam

[computourist]

Hi gaute, ragoth,

have a look at: github.com/computourist/ESP8266-MQTT-client/blob/master/ESP_DIG_10/ESP_DIG_10.ino

You might find what you are looking for...

Rgds,
Computourist

[Roy]

Has anyone looked at the $9 CHIP to use as a wifi node? see getchip.com

[gaute]

I believe CHIP is more in the category of Raspberry PI, more processingpower and connections..