ESP8266 confusion

Projects General Guidance
1

Im am confused ...

For a low-power project, I was looking for a way to add wifi to my Arduino Pro Mini. It will only need to do one or two http requests per day, show some things on an e-ink display, and will be sleeping for the better part of the day.

So i bumped into these wifi modules that are apparently based on an ESP8266 chip. What is confusing to me is that this chip designation if also used for fully fledged development boards.

I am wondering, if a ESP8266 is a microcontroller itsself (and one that seems to be faster than my arduino pro mini), does it make sense in such a setup? Am i strapping a truck op top of a prius? Wouldnt i be better off just running my project of an ESP board with wifi instead of hooking a ESP wifi module to my arduino pro mini?

2

Almost certainly yes

3

Thought so ...

Are there boards that are better suited for low power projects that need wifi?

4

Yes

Yes, it is faster

You would: skip Arduino board, use ESP directly.

ESP32 is newer and better in almost every way than ES8266. It also costs a bit more.

5

Maybe define what you mean by 'low-power'

6

The goal of this project is to just see how far i can push it for the sport of it. I have chosen an e-ink display because of its low-power advantages, and i would use 2 or 3 AAA batteries. I am hoping to achieve at least a year.

For now, the only thing it is going to do it display quote/joke of the day + some weather forecasts (im going to put endpoint in azure that will return this data in a single http request). This data would be refreshed daily, or maybe twice a day.

If the battery life allows it, i might add a DHT22 and also update temps+humitidy on the screen every 10 minutes.

7

The first thing to do is measure the deep sleep current of the chosen board.

Then you will know if the AAAs stand a chance of lasting a year.

8

Yes.

Yes.

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9

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