Week 15

Embedded Networking and Communications

Wifi network board

For this week i was going to connect a bluetooth board and communicate with it. But after looking at the range limitatons that bluetooth has I dicided to use a WiFi module instead. WiFi has more range and that is something I can impliment in my board for the final project.

Tecknical information

802.11 b / g / n
Wi-Fi Direct (P2P), soft-AP
Built-in TCP / IP protocol stack
Built-in TR switch, balun, LNA, power amplifier and matching network
Built-in PLL, voltage regulator and power management components
802.11b mode + 19.5dBm output power
Built-in temperature sensor
Support antenna diversity
off leakage current is less than 10uA
Built-in low-power 32-bit CPU: can double as an application processor
SDIO 2.0, SPI, UART
STBC, 1×1 MIMO, 2×1 MIMO
A-MPDU, A-MSDU aggregation and the 0.4 Within wake
2ms, connect and transfer data packets
standby power consumption of less than 1.0mW (DTIM3)

ESP8266 - ESP-01 WiFi module networking communications Datasheet

http://academy.cba.mit.edu/classes/networking_communications/ESP8266/esp01.pdf

Network connection board for ESP8266

To be able to use the WiFi ESP8266 module we have to make a board that

I found the tutorial that Neil made on the fabacademy site and downloaded all the files from the site and milled the board out.

http://academy.cba.mit.edu/classes/networking_communications/

Files

Interior Traces

Making the board

Milling the board out on our Roland SRM-20

Milling is finished and ready for soldering :-)

Here I have finished soldering the board for ESP8266

Programing

I followed this documentation that i found online on how to installing ESP8266 boards in Arduino

https://arduino-esp8266.readthedocs.io/en/2.7.1/installing.html#boards-manager

Instructions

Start Arduino and open Preferences window.
Enter https://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json into Additional Board Manager URLs field. You can add multiple URLs, separating them with commas.
Open Boards Manager from Tools > Board menu and find esp8266 platform.
Select the version you need from a drop-down box.
Click install button.
Don’t forget to select your ESP8266 board from Tools > Board menu after installation.

Start Arduino and goto File -> Preferences

Click on Additional Boards Manager URLs button

Paste the link to the Arduino board manager

Now we can go to Tools -> Boards -> Boards manager and Install the ESP8266 board

Click on the install button and the board will be installed

For more information on the Arduino Board Manager, see:

https://www.arduino.cc/en/guide/cores

Board Programing

I connected my FDTI cable to the board and to the USB port on my computer

And the I connected the WiFi module ESP8266 to the board. Everything ready for programing

Now we can open a example program to test the board.

File -> Examples -> ESP8266WebServer -> HelloServer

Select the correct board

Tools -> Board: "GenericESP8266 Module" -> GenericESP8266 Module

Select the correct usb port

Tools -> Port: -> COM

Problem

When I started uploading the program files to the board from Arduino I always got a USB port error.

I tried many times with various settings and configurations but nothing worked and I did not see any flaws with my board.

After looking over the board many times we finally found the cause of the problem

There was one bad soldering pin on the connector. Causing a short between to lines !!!

After I fixed this flaw the board worked purfectly !!!

HERO SHOTS

Then I tried out the Advanced Web server with uptime count and a graph

I also made a AssessPoint out of the module to extend my Wifi.. works fine :-)