Electronics

Setting up the components for our IoT project

We are going to use a very cheap and useful esp8266-based board. I would recommend buying LOLIN/WeMos boards as they're pretty cheap, reliable and easy to buy.

These boards are compatible with Arduino, which makes them really use to work with, and perfect for our workshop.

Drivers

We need to install USB drivers for the CH34X chipset so we can connect to our board and flash (install) our programs

Reboot your computer after installing the drivers

Setup

We're going to connect your RGB LED using to female-to-male jumper cables.

Make sure your board is not connected to USB before doing this

First, let's connect the jumper cables to our RGB LED.

AdaFruit's NeoPixel reference

There's two main controllers for these RGB leds, APA106 and WS2812, and both use the same configuration

If you're using an AdaFruit NeoPixel and you have difficulty locating the flat side, it's the one with the two longer pins

When you're done, it should look like this

Now, let's connect the RGB LED to the board using the male end of the jumper cables, making sure you respect the pins

  • RGB LED ground to board's GND

  • RGB LED +5v to board's 5v pin

  • RGB LED Data in to boards' data pin (D4 in our example)

When you're done, it'll look something like this,

References

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