Revision as of 18:18, 19 March 2015

This page is currently under construction and is daily updated with new information.

Overview

The In-Circuit radino WiFi combines an Arduino Micro with WiFi connectivity, integrating the entire TCP/IP stack in a small form-factor EMC-compliant enclosure.

• WiFi connectivity is provided by the Espressif ESP8266EX chip.
• User sketches run on the ATmega microcontroller.
• Sketches can be written, compiled and uploaded to the module using the Arduino IDE.
• Both chips are connected via a SPI-UART bridge provided by a SC16IS750 chip.

Main Functionality

WiFi

Act as access point with freely configurable properties or join existing networks by just setting ssid and password.

HTTP Server

A small HTTP server is running inside the ESP8266EX chip on freely configurable ports. The website is stored as a single HTML page inside the flash of the ESP8266EX chip which can be updated anytime. The HTML page is deliverd by the ESP on its own and some dynamic content features can be utilized.

• Embedding values which are requested from the ATmega
• Sending data to the ATmega
• Possibility to hide parts of the website until a valid password is given
• Getting raw values from the ATmega e.g. to process them in a client side application

Details on how to update the HTML page and utilize these functions using the Arduino IDE can be found in the documentation about the IC_ESP library. Details about how to compose the html webpage can be found at the ESP8266EX HTTPD documentation.

Telnet Server

The module can run a simple telnet server with freely configurable ports and an additional udp interface. Multiple simultaneous connections are possible. Data can be sent to all connected clients at once as well as to specific clients only. Please refer to the IC_ESP library docomentation about the usage within the Ardino IDE.

TCP Server

HTTP Client

A http request can be initialized by simply giving the targets ip, port and url. Different request methods can be selected e.g. to only get relevant data or the complete http response including all headers.

TCP Client

Multiple TCP sockets can be opened at once allowing the distribution of data e.g. sensor measurements to different hosts with low effort.

UDP Client

Simple interface to compose and send UDP packets.

FAQ

How to update/change the website?

The easiest way to update the website is to update it from within your Arduino sketch. You define the website data as a character array and upload it using the HTTPD_updateWebsite() function from the IC_ESP library. For example our radino_WiFi_TCP_push sketch (included in the library download) uses this mechanism.

Another method is to write the webpage via the UART. To make this possible the sketch has to forward the data from the UART serial to the ESP. Our radino_WiFi_Spider_Factory sketch has the needed code (commented out) at the beginning of the loop() function. Once active you can just write to the serial. The first bytes have to be ICUPLOAD$ followed directly by the content of the website. Our radino_WiFi_Spider_Factory contains an example webpage file.

On Window you can use the Hyperterminal to write the content.

On Linux you can use cat for example.

cat Website_spider.htm > /dev/ttyUSB0

Trouble Shooting

unknown register

If you see messages on the UART like

unknown register: 1022

it may be that you use a different sketch but the website uploaded to the ESP is from another sketch. In this case the used register number might differ and result in such messages.

To fix this you should simply upload the webpage belonging to your current sketch. See the how to above for details.

Libraries

IC_ESP: user interface to use the radino Wi-Fi

IC ESP8266EX interface: low level interface to communicate with the ESP chip

ESP8266EX HTTPD