esp8266 News - CNX Software - Embedded Systems News

June 7, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 3 Comments

PiWings 2.0 is a tiny drone based on Raspberry Pi Pico and ESP8266 WiFi module (Crowdfunding)

PiWings 2.0 Raspberry Pi Pico drone variants

SB Components’ PiWings 2.0 is a small drone combining a Raspberry Pi Pico with an ESP8266 WiFi module (ESP-12E) for wireless connectivity, and designed for STEM education and drone enthusiasts. The PiWings 2.0 board supports up to six motors and four servos, includes a 6-axis IMU for auto-leveling, and features I2C, SPI, UART, and GPIO expansion ports for custom sensor and/or actuator support. The drone itself is offered with three, four, or six rotors. PiWings 2.0 key features and specifications: Microcontroller board – Raspberry Pi Pico with Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Cortex-M0+ microcontroller, 264KB SRAM Wireless module – ESP-12E (ESP8266) WiFi module for iBus support Motor Drivers – 6 channels (3A DC) Servo Motors – 4 channels USB – 1x micro USB port (on Raspberry Pi Pico) Expansion – I2C, SPI, UART, GPIO ports Sensor – On-board 6-axis IMU (MPU6050) for auto-leveling Misc – 4x RGB LEDs Power Supply 3V […]

June 3, 2024June 3, 2024 by Tomisin Olujinmi - 1 Comment

DSTIKE Deauther Watch X is a cheap wireless hacking tool that runs the ESP8266 Deauther firmware

The DSTIKE Deauther Watch X is a Wi-Fi hacking tool that can be used to test wireless networks, powered by the ESP8266 wireless microcontroller and running the open-source Deauther firmware from SpacehuhnTech. It only works on 2.4GHz networks, since 5GHz Wi-Fi is not supported by the ESP8266. It also features a real-time clock module for displaying the time, like an actual watch. If you are not familiar with the term, a Wi–Fi Deauther is a device that can perform deauth or de-authentication attacks on Wi-Fi networks. It can kick other devices off a Wi-Fi network they are connected to, for learning or other purposes. The Deauther Watch X is the latest product in the DSTIKE Deauther Watch series from Travis Lin and we previously took a look at DSTIKE ESP32 Watch Development Board. The Watch X development board comes in a wristwatch form factor, uses an ESP8266 module instead of […]

May 16, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 6 Comments

HackBat – DIY open-source hardware Flipper Zero alternative features Raspberry Pi RP2040 MCU, ESP8266 WiFi module, RF transceiver…

HackBat DIY open source pentesting device

HackBat is an open-source hardware pen-testing device designed for hackers and makers and equipped with a Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontroller, an ESP8266 WiFi module, a sub-GHz RF transceiver, NFC, an OLED display, and more… It’s basically a DIY alternative to the popular Flipper Zero wireless hacking tool, that you can produce and assemble yourself. The Flipper Zero was the victim of its own success with the Canadian government (wrongly) claiming it could easily be used for car theft and planning to ban it (status still unclear right now), so Flipper Zero alternatives such as the M1 multitool device got some traction as backup solutions with some extra features. But any closed-source device could eventually be banned, something that’s close to impossible for an open-source hardware device like the HackBat although policymakers could still decide to impose heavy fines if they wanted to make this type of device illegal… HackBat key […]

March 28, 2024March 27, 2024 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

LoLRa project – Transmitting LoRa packets without radio using CH32V003, ESP8266, or ESP32-S2 MCU

The LoLRa project is a firmware-only LoRa transmission open-source project that works without a Semtech radio and instead relies on an I2S or SPI interface (so not exactly bit-banging) to transmit data with microcontrollers such as WCH CH32V003, or Espressif Systems ESP8266 and ESP32-S2 microcontrollers. LoRa is a proprietary protocol by Semtech, but people have been trying to reverse-engineer the LoRa PHY for years, and this culminated with a LoRa GNU Radio SDR implementation last year. But CNLohr found out you don’t even need a radio to send LoRa packets and you can instead use SPI or I2S interfaces from general-purpose microcontrollers to send packets that can be decoded by commercial off-the-shelf LoRa gateways and other chips. The current implementation is designed for the ITU Region 2 (aka The Americas) targeting the 902-928MHz frequency band, but the code could be changed for Region 1 (EU, Russia, Africa) to target 863-870MHz […]

September 19, 2023September 22, 2023 by Sponsored Post - Comments Off

Review of ALLPCB PCB manufacturing services with an ESP8266 board (Sponsored)

ALLPCB, a PCB manufacturer based in China, has offered us to review their PCB manufacturing services. We’ve taken them up on their offer and will report our experience with the ordering process, shipping, and the board itself, in this review. We will be using the E66 Transmitter board based on an ESP8266 module, and designed to read values from an I2C sensor and send them over RS485 using the Modbus RTU protocol for a range of up to 1.2 km. Since the E66 Transmitter can also connect to WiFi thanks to the ESP8266 module, Modbus TCP is also supported. Since we have our PCB design ready, we can go to the ALLPCB website to start the ordering process. We just had to upload the Gerber files, and then select parameters such as the number of boards, the number of layers, thickness, material type, and whether to include a Stencil or […]

July 12, 2023July 12, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 8 Comments

smolOS brings a Linux-like command line interface to ESP8266 microcontroller

smolOS (pronounced small OS) is an open-source, lightweight MicroPython program that implements a POSIX-style (Linux-like) command line interface for the ESP8266 WiFi microcontroller. Krzysztof Jankowski (w84death) designed smolOS to be easy to use, allowing the listing and removing of files and also including the smolEDitor which, as its name implies, is a simple text editor. There are currently eight commands with the familiar ls, cat, and rm, plus ed to launch the text editor, welcome to show the welcome screen above, cls to clear the screen, mhz to set the processor speed to 80 or 160 MHz, and info to display some hardware and software information. The project looks to be a work in progress, and the developer highlights the editor is at the alpha stage of development, so more features may be implemented over time by Krzysztof himself or by the community of developers. I also assume other microcontrollers […]

April 18, 2023April 18, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 9 Comments

PicoMQTT – An MQTT Client/Broker library for ESP8266 and ESP32

PicoMQTT is a lightweight MQTT library for Arduino/PlatformIO optimized for ESP8266 and ESP32. It not only supports the MQTT Client mode like most existing solutions but also the MQTT Broker mode which transforms an ESP8266 or ESP32 board into an MQTT gateway replacing a Raspberry Pi board or an IoT gateway typically used for this task.

The library follows MQTT 3.1.1 specification, supports the publishing and consuming of arbitrary-sized messages, can deliver thousands of messages per second, and supports easy integration with the ArduinoJson library to publish and consume JSON messages.

January 30, 2023February 2, 2023 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 2 Comments

MicroBlocks is a visual programming IDE for 32-bit microcontrollers

MicroBlocks is a visual programming IDE for 32-bit microcontrollers currently supporting the BBC Micro:bit V1/V2, Calliope mini (aka the German Micro:bit), Adafruit Circuit Playground Express and Bluefruit, Raspberry Pi Pico and Pico W, and various other boards including ESP32 and ESP8266-based boards. I discovered MicroBlocks in the list of talks for FOSDEM 2023, and although it did not make it to my virtual schedule, I thought it was interesting to look into and write about it. In their upcoming FOSDEM talk, Bernat Romagosa and Kathy Giori refer to MicroBlocks as small, fast, and human-friendly with development guided by four guiding principles: liveness, parallelism, portability, and autonomy. The IDE is inspired by Scratch, and as such, looks very similar to other visual programming interfaces I have used over the years. You can launch MicroBlocks from Google Chrome or Microsoft Edge on a PC (not a mobile device) without having to install […]