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Show HN: Micro web framework for low-resource systems – live example on ESP8266

ureq.solusipse.net

146 pointssolusipse40 comments

Whoa nelly! This web site is running entirely on an 8266, responds instantly, and is handling the kiss of death associated with HN linking with no problem. That is amazing.

this kind of thing gives me hope that Google could be replicated on a low budget

I guess, when they come out with microengineers.

I was thinking mainly of infrastructure...

this is indeed probably the best low-cost wifi chip out there, most of the esp8266 modules are still acting as an add-on module for other host-cpus(e.g. arduino) though, wish it can run something like freertos or contik on its own so it can be a IoT sensor standalone(maybe it's there already, had not checked it in the last few months).

TI had similar products but it's too expensive, in that sense IoT hardware has to be 'made-in-china'

I was told the core team of esp8266 are all ex-broadcom wifi designers.

Doesn't look like it [1]. Certainly a skilled team though!

[1] https://twitter.com/EspressifSystem/status/65372641801515827...

It can run FreeRTOS, the Espressif SDK has an example and there's even a nice open source project around it too: https://github.com/SuperHouse/esp-open-rtos

there are a couple of javascript environments running on it, as well as lua, so it has managed to turn into something that can easily be IoT ready.

There is a firmware to run lua directly on the esp8266: https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-firmware

I have been messing with nodemcu on an ESP8266 ebay board for the last few weeks. It was initially really weird to have a REPL on an embedded system but I'm already missing it when I go back to other platforms.

And ESP8266 is now supported by the Arduino IDE. See https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino

i am continuously impressed by the esp8266. i have been building things on and off with them for the last couple of months, and bought enough of them to give out.

at less than $2 each, they really are amazing.

I bought one as well although I didn't do anything yet, would you mind share what you did/recommend doing? I was thinking to make a temperature sensor monitoring device, as I have an arduino that is doing the job now

a temperature sensor was actually my first use of it (and i will continue to build a couple as remote sensors) - basically, i've been adding more and more sensors just to see how much it could take.

now, i'm having to build out PCB's to support everything (including the voltage regulators to 3.3v and 5v), as i've outgrown breadboards.

Thanks, that is my plan too, add as many sensor as I could! For the moment I have a microphone, a water level and a couple of temperature sensors waiting for a microcontroller.

Could you link a couple of links to resources you found useful? I haven't look at it properly but when I try to search I was a bit confused and not sure on where to start

http://www.esp8266.com

https://github.com/esp8266/Arduino

https://github.com/cesanta/smart.js/tree/master

using the arduino environment, i had a circuit up reporting temperature in less than 5 minutes.

thanks! I didn't know about Cesanta so I made my own from scratch, but it is very bulky.

Hey @jerrysievert, this is Omer from Cesanta. Great to hear that Smart.js worked for you. Would you mind sharing a bit more on your project? I can be reached at omer at cesanta.com Thanks and best of luck!

I've made motion sensors (still slightly buggy) and a small circuit to start my laundry machine remotely. I might do temp/humidity monitoring for a specialized application at some point.

Where do you get them for $2?

aliexpress.com

Got a link? There are a bunch of them there... But i'm kinda curiouis which one you bought. So i don't have to analyse things all over ;)

no link, the place i bought mine from in august doesn't appear to have any anymore.

i recommend buying the esp-12e, and the first one on my search comes up at $1.97. note, these things aren't breadboard friendly out of the box. if you want that, buy a huzzah from adafruit or buy one of the breakout boards on aliexpress (17 cents each or so).

For the 12E to start with, take a look at the nodemcu dev boards. More expensive but it's a great little board to start a project on and then go to the bare module since it includes all the usb<->ttl, and regulator stuff.

For someone wanting to tinker but not being great at electronics project, what is the easiest way to: - Play with the chip (testing interfaces, deploying code etc) - "Deploy" it (ie. connect it to ground power, via 230v-USB connector or similar?

buy a huzzah from adafruit, it breaks everything out, and is much more tolerant than the board itself.

couple it with a small breadboard and an mb102, and you're good to go.

Thanks!

Onthe software side, the Arduino programming environment now supports the ESP8266. This makes it very easy to start playing.

One hint - to program, reboot with the programming pin (GPIO0) grounded, but take it back to 3.3V before you start programming. That took me a couple of hours to figure out.

>running at 80Mhz

160MHz http://www.esp8266.com/viewtopic.php?p=8107#p8107

also "Rebooting every 400 users" doesnt sound all that stable :)

This reboot is forced, we had over 3k requests with no hanging of whatsoever. It just helps when traffic is huge. This particular chip (serving linked website) is running at 80Mhz.

Plus, running micropython this board rocks. Imagine a repl on the USB serial interface. My branch is rock solid posting millions of messages from python to a webserver.

Awesome work! Looks like there's a great community growing around the esp8266. I'll need to check it out myself sometime.

This is very impressive.

Thank you!

Wasn't this posted yesterday? I swear I saw it in the RSS feed.

edit: Yeah, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10369608 Weird, what's a repost invite?

It's explained here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9806904

We've been running a series of experiments to try to mitigate the randomness of what achieves liftoff from /newest. We started working on this because many users complained that good stories were getting ignored, and we looked closely and found that this was true. Below are links to a few comments I've posted about this over the last year, if anyone's interested. The next experiment will probably be to add a profile setting that people can turn on to let the software repost their story at a good time, rather than having to get an email invitation—although to judge from the feedback we've been getting, people seem to like the emails.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9828818

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8790134

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9866140

Cool! Thanks for working on making interesting stories more visible.

What would be awesome is if by doing this the community system gradually trains itself to post more interesting stories in the first place.

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