I'm a newbie to Arduino and I would like to request some help from the community here on how to connect my project to the Internet for online data logging.
My project is for school and it's a water quality sensor system that measures some surrounding conditions and the water turbidity with a photodiode and a LED. This project requires including IoT elements and it's in the planning stage so I'm calculating reimbursement required for materials.
I would want to use a module with wifi capability connected to the Arduino so that I can access the data being logged atm by the sensors OR an online alert system if the water is getting murky, replacing the data logging with an SD card module to store logged data.
The Wifi modules that I'm able to acquire in Singapore without ordering from overseas are:
WiFi Module ESP8266 01
WiFi Module ESP8266 12E
I would like to know which one of these would be better for me to use and how to I go about using them with the Arduino. The model I own is an Arduino Mega clone.
Using an Arduino Mega 2560 with an ESP8266-01 modul is from software point of view not a huge challange. At least if the modul is not "outaged" and uses an AT command catalog 1.1.1 or newer, WifiESP is a nice library to start with. A little bit more complicated is the use of the hardware itself, because the IO voltage level of a Arduino Mega is 5V but the ESP is about 3.3V. So there is some kind of level shifter between RX/TX needed. In a worse case scenario, you may also face some problems in the power supply of the ESP. The 3.3V pin of the Mega might not be able to drive the ESP. Then there is a voltage regulator between Mega 5V and ESP 3.3V needed in addtion to the IO level shifter.
Maybe you would like to have a look at some links:
Doubledoge:
, replacing the data logging with an SD card module to store logged data.
Not such a good idea. You already have it, I assume it is working OK, you never know when your WiFi isn't, so why replace it? It costs you nothing to leave it there as backup and, if you are anything like serious about what you are doing, it may turn out to be valuable.