Arduino ESP8266 stream wifi

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Capt.Don

Node red looks interesting. I like the idea of connecting the various streams in a central database, and possibly moving out from OpenCPN.

Node red is just wonderful

And I'm an idiot, no need for any kind of usb board to get the data into your computer, you can just plug in a whole variety of sensors into the esp8266 and have it send the data over wifi.
Bit long winded at the moment but I send temperature, voltage and barometer over mqtt from a esp which then gets turned into signalk. You could send the data in any format and have node red do anything with it, mqtt is quite easy as it sends as topics. Udp should work just as well. One really handy function is having engine temperature converted I to water temperature so it can be displayed in an Opencpn dashboard.

Easyesp also makes all this simple though a little limited if you can't be bothered to code.

Just to whet your node-red appetite...



And pressure during a near miss with a small tornado..

[Capt.Don]

Exactly where this leads to!!

What I envision is a series of ESP8266's connected to various sensors, including barometer, air-temperature, engine-temp, oil-pressure, fridge.... These are each stand-alone little boxes, simply broadcasting their data. Each sensor can be easily put together for about $4.00 in parts (ESP8266 $2.00, 3.3v buck converter $1.00, voltage sensor $1.00). Originally I thought to feed OpenCPN, but node-red opens a lot of options.

Thanks for the inspiration.

I spent about an hour with node-red. Using my ESP8266 wifi barometer/temperature server, I configured two graphs. It is very easy to setup the connectors, split the NMEA data for temp and pressure, and feed the gauge.

At this point, I'm reconsidering whether I need the NMEA stream or a more compact json message, fed to node-red and displayed on a browser. There's no need for NMEA sentences. I also don't see the need for Signal-K - seems like a lot of overhead to digest 1/2 dozen data values. Node-red looks like it will do everything I want.

Fun,
Don

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by Capt.Don

At this point, I'm reconsidering whether I need the NMEA stream or a more compact json message, fed to node-red and displayed on a browser. There's no need for NMEA sentences. I also don't see the need for Signal-K - seems like a lot of overhead to digest 1/2 dozen data values.

I was wondering if this thought would come up... the main reasons for conforming to NMEA or SignalK would be because you already have consuming devices ready to accept and use data in that format. Otherwise, if the display is custom, you can keep it as simple as you want.

I've been playing with an ESP8266-based sensor for a potential outdoor weather station that periodically pushes environmental and battery voltage data at a controllable interval. A shout-out for the BME280 sensor (if you're not already using it): temperature, pressure and relative humidity from one tiny device.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Lake-Effect

Otherwise, if the display is custom, you can keep it as simple as you want.
.

Mqtt is pretty a handy though you'll need a broker to talk to, think the node-red node might set up one, otherwise need to install one like mosquitto. Node red makes it easy with just a little clicking to filter the mqtt and send it anywhere you want.
Bonus is with some sort of WiFi access you can send all the data to the cloud for viewing anywhere straight from the esp (though haven't done that to check.) , mqtt is very low bandwidth.

Mqtt is pretty a handy though you'll need a broker to talk to, think the node-red node might set up one, otherwise need to install one like mosquitto. Node red makes it easy with just a little clicking to filter the mqtt and send it anywhere you want.
Bonus is with some sort of WiFi access you can send all the data to the cloud for viewing anywhere straight from the esp (though haven't done that to check.) , mqtt is very low bandwidth.

[conachair]

Originally Posted by Capt.Don

, voltage sensor $1.00).

Fun,
Don

Worth checking out the ads1115, it can do differential measurements so you don't get into an earth loop mess, really accurate.
Node red makes it quite easy to send everything to a database like sqlite, the whole database is just one file so easy to copy anywhere for fiddling. This is many Meg of data but is lots of boat data from many months with some python converting the database into a web page. Loads fun

Bokeh Plot

[thecivvie]

I came across this and would love to intergrate it into my opencpn. But running it, the light flashs and I can see no outout. If I log into my Pi that open cpn runs on, I can see that the nodemcu connects on 192.168.4.11. I can ping it but I cannot ping 192.168.4.254

I added 2 connections to opencpn covering the twp ports on udp

I know I am missing something simple