On the right side, it has a micro-USB port to power the device and to connect to a computer to upload code and debug.ĭevelopment boards do not usually require soldering, they have pins for all the inputs and outputs. This is known as a “development board”, because it comes with a few nice extras. While the microcontroller on this device is the same as with the previous one, the board is larger and has additional components. During the prototyping and development phases, we prefer more accessible devices such as the below model, based on the same ESP8266: You can think of the above type of microcontrollers as “production” devices, better for a finished product. During development, you want to be able to easily connect and experiment with other components, and you also need a link to a computer to upload the code that runs inside the microcontroller. Having to design your own project using one of these is, however, somewhat inconvenient. Microcontrollers like the above are inside of a lot of devices that we use every day. The golden lines printed on the left side of the board function as an antenna to increase wireless reception. You can guess from looking at the picture that this microcontroller has Wi-Fi connectivity, which makes it ideal for projects that need to connect to cloud services such as Twilio’s. To these you can solder additional components such as batteries, buttons, sensors, and displays. This model is a single chip mounted on a small board providing connectors on the top, bottom and right sides. Most microcontrollers have a unit sale price below $10 USD, much less when buying them in bulk.īelow you can see the popular ESP8266 microcontroller: In addition to their small size, these devices are cheap. You can think of a microcontroller as a small computer – so small that it is contained in a single chip. Below you can see a picture of the hardware prototype: This is the perfect project if you are new to microcontrollers and want something simple that you can build without soldering. The project that we are going to build is an SMS doorbell using an ESP8266 microcontroller, a push button, MicroPython, and Twilio’s Programmable SMS service. This project should give you a good idea of the kinds of projects you can build on your own with cheap microcontroller hardware using MicroPython and the same Twilio APIs that many users know and love. In this article, I want to show you how to build an IoT doorbell that sends you an SMS instead of producing sound. As a software developer, I’m excited about how low the barrier of entry is considering the low cost of IoT hardware and the wide availability of development tools in the open-source ecosystem. The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to touch not only every industry, but also most everyday aspects of our lives.
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