Could someone help me with a project to report the number of instagram followers on the ESP8266 board and the MAX7219 8-digit display?
Maybe.
Do you have it operating with a demonstration using the "Parola" library?
did you find a solution
do you have a working tut ??
The main problem is that at the moment there is no working solution how to get the number of Instagram followers. Despite the fact that this number is posted on the site, it is very difficult to get it out of there.
It is necessary to render the entire page along with javascript, and with a simulation of a real browser, and only after that read the value. A small device can not do it.
Perhaps you need to make a special service that works separately, which will read the value from the site once a minute and publish it in a more convenient form. And Arduino or ESP8266 will already see this result.
Like most sites, Instagram has an API for these kinds of things, there's no need to render the entire page, just get the JSON with the user data:
Instagram Platform - Documentation - Meta for Developers (click the "Response" button)
Logging in and getting an access token might be a bit harder though, it seems to use OAuth2. I haven't tried any OAuth implementations for ESP8266.
Pieter
Thank you, I searched for that solution for a long time, I am doing a project as well, just trying to find out how fast you can change the number of followers and like's on that type of display's in real time. The main idea is to find out how fast this script will work on arduino and on python, there is automatic likes service and auto comments for your Instagram profile that that will increase these two numbers on a scheduled time so I will be able to track it as fast as I need and to find out the difference, wish me luck