Project Development

Once more, let's do this in true FAQ fashion:

What tasks have been completed, and what tasks remain?

All the manufacturing parts have been manufactured; however, as I had expected in week 16, programming of the final board has been challenging -- it has not been possible to actually upload a program to the processor of the final board -- the ESP8266.

What has worked? What hasn't?

As mentioned above, the final board has not been programmable yet, so it is not possible to tell whether it works. The Nodemcu board which uses ESP8266 as well, except on a breakout board has been programmed and functioned accordingly, but not the last version of the board featuring ESP 12-Mod.

On the left you can see the working NodeMCU board, and on the left the still-unprogrammable ESP 12-Mod board.

Another thing that has not worked in displaying the data of the DHT11 temperature/humidity sensor using the interface I created. The serial monitor works and the sensor works properly.

What questions need to be resolved?

I need to find out how to transfer the serial data that I receive from the DHT11 temperature/humidity sensor to the html interface that I created inside the Arduino C code used for programming my NodeMCU board.

Even further, I need to find out whether the FTDI connection I am using for programming the ESP 12-Mod is correct or not.

Neil also suggested that the problem may be the memory, and ESP8266 may not be well suited as the processor for this project while also being the WiFi module, and ESP32 may be more appropriate for that.

What will happen when?

Will currently focus on assembling and the finishing touches and presenting, and seeing if I can get the board to work really quickly. Otherwise, may have to come back to it later and work on programming it some more.

What have you learned?

I have learned so much through the course, and even more, enjoyed learning to make things and making them.

I have learned to play around with several softwares, additively and subtractively digitally fabricating things; I've come across many a new ideas, gotten a view of possibilities and gotten a taste of their expanding realm.

I want to build more, test more, learn more, and all of that is just starting.