EEVblog #998 - How To Program ESP8266 WiFi With Arduino

[EEVblog]

How to connect and use the low cost ESP8266 WiFi module with the Arduino environment.
How to connect with a Youtube API to retrieve channel statistics, using JSON on the Wemos D1 Mini.

Nixie Tube Project Part 7

[jamie_1318]

You really don't need to blur out your device's internal IP address, it's not a valid address except on your network.

[German_EE]

Yeah, but a machine I found on 127.0.0.1 has some really interesting stuff 

[RGB255_0_0]

Some guy called Sagem is always on mine.

[Cliff Matthews]

Somewhat related, I need some guidance maybe from Dave2?

I can get subscriber counts with simple URL like https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/eevblog/realtime
But.. I'd like to actualize a list of subscriber counts monthly from a growing list of channels found here:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/other-blog-specific/dd/msg1093983/#msg1093983

Some channels have a name, other use a Channel_ID (maybe it's just channels with spaces in the name)
Kaizer Power Electronics    https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCSukTlgTEWiL-sl0UeYeJvQ/realtime
joe smith            https://socialblade.com/youtube/channel/UCsK99WXk9VhcghnAauTBsbg/realtime
w2aew                https://socialblade.com/youtube/user/w2aew/realtime

Can the YouTube API easily cough-up a CSV helping us out? (and perhaps show defunct channels?)

[Cliff Matthews]

I must be getting close. A few queries turned up requests like this:
https://www.googleapis.com/youtube/v3/channels?part=statistics&id=eevblog

[jnissen]

Welcome to 2017 Dave! I know the feeling as I have been into these little modules for the last year or two now. Amazing capability for only a few bucks.

[paulcav]

you may be able to use an Iot website hosting service to store the data so that you can retrive the data  based on date, users etc.

[Rolo]

Good video, one detail is a bit confusing, at 7:21 you download the zip file from github but a few steps later you use the board manager to actually add the boards to the arduino IDE. In my experiance the zip file is not needed when using the board manager. 
No problem but can be confusing for all playing along at home.
 

[Brumby]

People have spent their time and effort building Arduino compatible structures and data for a variety of hardware outside the general Arduino environment - and made available through Github.

It was my understanding that one such ZIP file provided several blocks of data and it was one of those that was downloaded and then imported into the IDE.  The board manager could then use this data.

[Barny]

Yeah, but a machine I found on 127.0.0.1 has some really interesting stuff 

127.255.255.254 has damn good stuff too

[djacobow]

I've been playing the ard / esp / Rpi universe for awhile now, and it just continues to blow me away how cheap AND easy it is to build working, useful things with these tools. It still helps to really know what's going on under the hood, but even that's not a hard requirement, apparently. The new platform plugin feature in the Ard IDE is a major step forward, too.

If the Ard IDE people:

- handled multi-file dependencies intelligently (rather than recompile everything in the sketch, every time)
- added a reasonable text editor perhaps as a plugin (as an option)
- added some git integration (as an option)
- added some debug integration

then I think they could honestly take over a lot of "professional" development environments, whose main claim to professionalness is that they are huge, bloated, complex, and in general a PITA to get up and running. Sure, very large, complex projects maybe will never be Ard-friendly, but for me, I do a lot of embedded stuff in the 5-15 source files comprising the 200 - 5000 lines of code, and I can live with Arduino.

People correctly point out that a lot of the Ard libs are pretty crappy, but they are reasonable training wheels, and you don't have to use them.

I'm a fan.

[cdev]

Is there a site somewhere that keeps a table comparing the capabilities of the different small MCU dev boards/ IOT boards? If not then that seems like an appropriate sticky thread here.

They seem like a great way to put all my old "legacy hardware" online. It would be convenient to be able to use the serial connectivity on a bunch of my devices wirelessly. (the ones that already have USB or RS232 serial connectivity.)

[jnissen]

This is a fail list here:

https://www.postscapes.com/internet-of-things-hardware/#

I've run across several such sites and none of them are ideal. Based on the shear number of example projects the ESP8266 based boards easily outnumber the others. The main attractive thing is the low cost. I created some wifi water sensors I can place near my water heater/AC units for less than $10 each. The data is available online and if the sensor readings exceed a threshold i set I can get an SMS text message something is wrong. Amazing capability and I created the prototype in one evening using the Arduino IDE and commonly available libraries.

There are a lot of IOT sites that support various boards. Do your homework and check them out. I built the water sensor with Ubidots but there are many others that offer such services. http://www.ubidots.com