ChApTEr 2 ■ hArdwArE for IoT SoluTIonS
Sparkfun also sells an Arduino-sized board called the ESP8266 WiFi shield that you can use with your
Arduino boards (http://sparkfun.com/products/13287). It can be used to provide WiFi capabilities to
your Arduino projects. I have one of these too and am using it in place of the normal Arduino WiFi shield
(see the “Recommended Accessory” sidebar) mainly because I wanted to experiment with the ESP8266 WiFi
capabilities without the extra work to program the ESP8266 Thing.
You can find more information about the ESP8266 in Sparkfun’s excellent resource library at
https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/esp8266-thing-hookup-guide.
reCOMMeNDeD aCCeSSOrY
If you plan to do any prototyping with your Arduino or other microcontroller board, I recommend getting
or making your own experiment base (sometimes called a breadboard holder). You can easily make
one from acrylic as I have done in the example shown here. In this case, I have an older duemilanove
board mounted next to a half-sized breadboard. I even had room to place a 9V battery holder for
powering the experiment.You can also buy them pre-drilled for most Arduino uno–sized boards. Both Sparkfun
(http://sparkfun.com/products/11235) and Adafruit (http://adafruit.com/products/275) stock
excellent examples. You can also find these for other boards such as the raspberry pi.Keeping the microcontroller and breadboard together makes it possible to move the experiment from
one place to another or stop and resume at a later date.