[Alex Jensen] wanted to build a battery-powered weather station, using an ESP8266 breakout board to connect to WiFi. However, [Alex]’s research revealed that the ESP chip uses around 70mA per hour when the radio is on — meaning that he’d have to change batteries a lot more than he wanted to. He really wanted a low power rig such that he’d only have to change batteries every 2 years on a pair of AAs.

The two considerations would be, how often does the ESP get powered up for data transmissions — and how often the weather station’s ATtiny85 takes sensor readings. Waking up the ESP from sleep mode takes about 16mA — plus, once awake it takes about 3 seconds to reconnect, precious time at 70mA. However, by using a static IP address he was able to pare that down to half a second, with one more second to do the actual data transmission. In addition to the hourly WiFi connection, the Tiny85 must be powered, though its relatively modest 1.5mA per hour doesn’t amount to much, even with the chip awake for 36 hours during the year. All told, the various components came to around 500 mAh per year, so using a pair of AA batteries should keep the rig going for years.

ESP8266 on batteries for years – part 1
https://www.cron.dk/esp8266-on-batteries-for-years-part-1/

I believe that just like me, many of you have already had to flash a firmware to the ESP-12 before soldering it on a pcb. So I made a video showing how I solved this problem.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXDHyCQ3suw

While the ESP8266 has made its way into virtually every situation where a low-cost WiFi solution is needed, it’s not known as being a low-power solution due to the amount of energy it takes to run WiFi. [Alex] took this design constraint as more of a challenge though, and with the help of an ATtiny microcontroller was able to develop a weather station using an ESP8266 that only needs new batteries every 2-4 years.

ESP8266 on batteries for years – part 1
https://www.cron.dk/esp8266-on-batteries-for-years-part-1/

For some time I have been fascinated by the possibilities of the ESP8266, but I never really considered it good for a life on batteries. I got an idea of making an outdoor weather station that would send measured light level, temperature and humidity to my home automation server.

The ESP is a hungry beast when it’s doing WiFi. According to different sources on the internet it uses about 70 mA on average when WiFi is on! This would mean that I have to change batteries on my sensor quite some times every year.

I instead came up with the idea of a design using an AtTiny85 for doing frequent measurements and then once in a while to wake up the ESP beast to transmit it’s recorded data to the server.

If you have an Alexa, one of the best things you can buy to go with it is a Harmony Hub remote. Sure, you get a universal remote to control all your home theater equipment, but you’ll hardly use it because the Alexa can virtually push the Harmony buttons for you. The negative word in this paragraph, though, is “buy.” The Harmony Hub isn’t inexpensive. Fortunately [Michael Higginis] has you covered. He has an ESP8266 universal remote that you can control with Alexa

On the one hand, the idea is fairly simple. An ESP8266 has plenty of horsepower to read and recreate IR codes. However, we were very impressed with the web portal used to configure the device and integrating it with Alexa is a neat trick.

Unlike a real Harmony Hub, however, the remote only controls IR devices. However, since the Alexa to device connection is WiFi, you probably won’t miss having an RF remote, even if you need to tuck the remote away in an enclosure somewhere.

ESP8266 Compatible IR Blaster that accepts HTTP commands for use with services like Amazon Echo
https://github.com/mdhiggins/ESP8266-HTTP-IR-Blaster/

In the old days, spies eavesdropped on each other using analog radio bugs. These days, everything’s in the cloud. [Sebastian] from [Hacking Beaver] wondered if he could make a WiFi bug that was small and cheap besides. Enter the ESP8266 and some programming wizardry.

[Sebastian] is using a NodeMCU but suggests that it could be pared down to any ESP8266 board — with similar cuts made to the rest of the electronics — but has this working as a proof of concept. A PIC 18 MCU samples the audio data from a microphone at 10 kHz with an 8-bit resolution, dumping it into a 512-byte buffer. Once that fills, a GPIO pin is pulled down and the ESP8266 sends the data to a waiting TCP server over the WiFi which either records or plays the audio in real-time.

Voice over WI-FI with ESP8266
http://hackingbeaver.com/?p=957

Using an ESP8266, two relays, five ICs, and some R and Cs, the iDONT is placed between the doorbell transformer and existing wiring to the doorbell and chimes. The iDONT not only silences the doorbell on command from a smart phone, but sends a message when the doorbell is pressed even when the chimes are off!

It turns out that there are different types of flash used with the ESP8266, and the correct programming mode must be selected for a given hardware setup. These modes are known as DIO and QIO, meaning “dual IO” and “quad IO” respectively. This refers to the number of IO line used to talk to the flash memory. There are also further modes, known as DOUT and QOUT. It’s important to identify the modes supported by the flash chip on board, by looking at the datasheet. Obviously this can be difficult on some pre-built modules, so experimentation is the key here.

Channel-Attack # deauthentication Attack.
While hackers do good most of the time, we occasionally do evil and pl

Channel-Attack with ESP8266

Channel Attack-not-deauthentication Attack.

http://github.com/vuong244/Channel-Attack-ESP8266

While hackers do good most of the time, we occasionally do evil and play a prank. The ESP8266, unlike JSON, allows me to do evil. Thus, I programmed the microcontroller for an evil purpose: slow down the WiFi.

Packet from a station is always addressed toward the access point, even if its destination is another station. The access point then relays the packet either via a wired interface, or wirelessly toward the recipient station. The two transmissions (from station to access point, and from access point to recipient station) can choose speeds independently.

[G6EJD] wanted to design a low power datalogger and decided to look at the power consumption of an ESP32 versus an ESP8266. You can see the video results below.

Of course, anytime someone does a power test, you have to wonder if there were any tricks or changes that would have made a big difference. However, the relative data is interesting (even though you could posit situations where even those results would be misleading). You should watch the videos, but the bottom line was a 3000 mAh battery provided 315 days of run time for the ESP8266 and 213 days with the ESP32.

I’ve fallen and I can’t get up. We all remember it, and we all know what product we’re talking about. Now, with cheap microcontrollers, ubiquitous WiFi, and wearable electronics, there must be a simpler solution. [Jean Paradedel]’s emergency button project is designed to replace those wearable emergency buttons, which usually include an expensive call center plan.

[Jean]’s button is based off an ESP8266 module, which sends an email to a care provider if a button is pressed. The whole thing is powered by a CR2032 watch battery and the device’s case was 3D printed. The interface is simple — it’s just a wearable button, after all — and the form factor is small enough to be completely unobtrusive.

Emergency button : Reliable, Inexpensive & Design
Emergency Button for 7$ based on ESP8266 Wifi board
https://hackaday.io/project/27017-emergency-button-reliable-inexpensive-design

One of the main problems for old age people is keeping their balance while walking. It is getting more and more difficult to move, and if they fall down it’s very complicated to get back up. My family is calling my grandmother every evening to check for this kind of problem. There are some emergency buttons that can help, but you often have an expensive monthly payment for the call center. In addition, most old people don’t like to wear some gray plastic technologies around their neck.