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ESP8266 based Veranda Control Box

ESP8266 based Veranda Control Box

Published by Jan Penninkhof on January 14, 2016

Just thought of quickly writing an update on my latest project at home in which I have built a veranda control box. At the end of fall, our local shops are trying to sell everything that has to do with gardens and summer for a relatively reasonable price. Haseenah always wanted to have a veranda in the garden, so that she could leave the pillows in the outdoor sofa without having to worry about the weather. So when the price was right we got one, but of course on one condition: I wanted to assemble it myself. So at the…

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Over-the-Air ESP8266 programming using PlatformIO

Over-the-Air ESP8266 programming using PlatformIO

Published by Jan Penninkhof on December 22, 2015

There were three items on my two-do list for quite some time already: Get an ESP toolstack running on my Mac Try out PlatformIO and see if it’s nice to work with Try out video blogging (or vlogging) So, why not combined the three to-do items into one experiment? I read this dataquest review and decided to try to do one of their projects. So yesterday I got my gear ready and started experimenting and recording and editing, almost all at the same time. Here’s there result: In this video I have installed an ESP toolstack using platform IO with the…

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Really no excuses for not starting ESP8266 IoT experiments anymore

Really no excuses for not starting ESP8266 IoT experiments anymore

Published by Jan Penninkhof on December 18, 2015

I finally finished my supply of ESP8266 chips and thought of ordering a few new ones. I can’t believe how low their price has become since I last ordered them. Last time, I bought them for approximately€4, and I already thought that was a complete bargain. But today I saw a seller on AliExpress that offered them for only €1.67, including shipment from China! http://www.aliexpress.com/item/2015-New-version-1PCS-ESP8266-serial-WIFI-model-ESP-01-Authenticity-Guaranteed-Internet-of-things/32473490612.html That’s really an unbelievable price, and I wonder if we’ll ever see it hit a bottom. Coming to think of it, the new ESP32 is coming pretty soon, and I really wonder what that will mean for…

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Connecting an ESP8266 to the SAP HANA Cloud Platform

Connecting an ESP8266 to the SAP HANA Cloud Platform

Published by Jan Penninkhof on June 13, 2015

As a proof of concept, I have tried to make a very easy setup of an ESP8266 and flashed it with simple firmware that connects to WiFi and sends temperature sensor data to the new SAP HANA Cloud IoT services. The aim is to have the chip to work in an autonomous mode, meaning that there will be no brokers or bridge involved that are taking messages from the ESP8266 to send it to the SAP HANA Cloud Platform. Calcium and phosphate solubilities were also influenced by temperature and the time after solution preparation. Under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), CBD…

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SAP HANA Café S02E04 – Internet of Things

SAP HANA Café S02E04 – Internet of Things

Published by Jan Penninkhof on June 8, 2015

On May 29, SAP and The Next View organised a CodeJam on one of my favorite topics: The Internet of Things. SAP has brought the Node.js-based Tessel development boards to experiment with. Of course, the emphasis shouldn’t be on the hardware and soldering, but on connecting them to the SAP Hana Cloud. I must say, this Tessel is quite a nifty little board that’s extremely easy to program. On the other hand, I also felt powerless when it decided to reboot out of nothing, perhaps due to some very hot-off-the-press firmware? Thing is that it did play nice with the HANA Cloud…

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ESP8266 programming from Eclipse

ESP8266 programming from Eclipse

Published by Jan Penninkhof on June 8, 2015

As most people developing SAP solutions are currently using Eclipse for their edge projects, I thought it would be convenient to write a blog on how to connect your Eclipse environment to the ESP8266. Step 0: Get some ESP8266 chips and connect one to your computer The ESP8266 chips can be bought from various sources. Great resources to get the chip are Ebay, AliExpress or Banggood. You can buy the bare ones, but you can also buy a development board along with it. I’d highly recommend to buy a development board, because it makes life a lot easier. Most development…

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VNSG CDV meetup & Internet of Things

VNSG CDV meetup & Internet of Things

Published by Jan Penninkhof on June 3, 2015

On June 3rd, I had the privilege to address the custom development special interest group of VNSG about the Internet of Things and what SAP’s portfolio looks like in this space. Of course it was all about connecting Things to SAP’s HANA systems, either on- or off-premise. More important was even on how data collected through things are used to add value to the business, not only by just providing a dashboard, but by supporting or even making decisions by combining sensor data with predictive analysis and machine learning tools. Ultimately, businesses would have to completely reimagine and transform themselves…

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Why you should use MQTT in IoT projects and why SAP should support it

Why you should use MQTT in IoT projects and why SAP should support it

Published by Jan Penninkhof on March 17, 2015

While designing an IoT device, there are multiple options to connect them. Once of the considerations should be the protocol being used to chat to other devices or to a server. Previously, I would have easily chosen to make the interface REST based and have done so with Jeenode project a few years ago. But REST is not ideal as it is designed around a simple request/response model. So you ask “did my account balance change” and the response is returned “no it did not”. So you check again a few minutes later, and get the same response. Sound like…

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How to program an ESP8266

How to program an ESP8266

Published by Jan Penninkhof on March 17, 2015

It is not difficult to program an ESP8266, especially if you already have some experience with embedded devices such as the Arduino. An ESP8266 actually works quite similar to an Arduino. Although you can barely speak about an operating system, your program is embedded in firmware and using some hooks, it is possible to run custom code. In most Arduino sketches the most important hooks are setup() and loop(). Setup is called when the Arduino is booted up (or reset), while the loop routine runs over and over again forever. The ESP8266 works in a more or less similar way,…

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Setting up the ESP8266 Open SDK

Setting up the ESP8266 Open SDK

Published by Jan Penninkhof on March 15, 2015

It seems that a large part of the ESP8266 community has moved to the esp-open-sdk toolchain. And for a reason: the esp-open-sdk is much easier to install and update. Besides that, the esp-open-sdk replaes many of the proprietary libraries with open source versions.

Just as an exercise, I decided to give this toolchain a try as well, starting with a bare Ubuntu 14.04 (server) installation as its foundation again. It was my goal to make the same blinky run, but this time through the use of the esp-open-sdk toolchain.

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