I'm relatively new to Arduino and the like and have tested the idea of using it to aid in the control and automation of a future model railway (among other household things potentially).
I have been able to ascertain that I can use motor shields and basic Uno R3 boards with an additional ESP8266 wifi board without an issue, simply slot in and carry on setup as normal within reason.
However, I have plans for many sensors and as such I plan to use a Mega 2560 with a sensor shield of appropriate size but I would also like to add the same wi-fi capability to it. My planned components are:
Arduino/Elegoo Mega 2560 R3 Board
(Insert Company Name) Mega 2560 Sensor Shield
MakerFabs ESP8266 Wi-Fi shield
Is this possible to simply plug and play or are there other aspects I need to consider? Or potentiall other better options.
Use JMRI. If you go to their page, you can find some links to supporting Arduino hardware/software.
I recommend editing your thread title to be more informative about what you are asking for.
Your specific shield question, plug and play doesn't exist with shields. You have to get schematics and/or diagrams and compare pin outs to detect conflicts.
I wrote the thread title as that simply because it seemed to the point. I know that I can use a Mega 2560 with Motor Shield and an ESP8266 wifi board all in the same unit and then code from there using DCC++.
But my question was more, after I have this setup, I want to use Sensor, thus a sensor hub built from a Mega2560 and Sensor Shield. I wanted to know if as with the aforementioned Arduino setup I could simply plug and use an ESP8266 Wifi Shield with the sensor shield so I can reduce wires going to the RPi with JMRI.
Anyway this question is now redundant as I have since discovered a better way of achieving my intended functionality
