Simulating push of buttons with nodemcu to arduino

Projects General Guidance
1

Hello people,

I am working on a project that requires both internet connection and a bunch of 5V dependant operations. I am trying to figure a way out to keep the nodemcu board away from these heavy operations and let an arduino mega board handle them instead. Plus, the nodemcu board does not have as much GPIOs as needed. And because it will need frequent task schedule updates over the air, and the tasks can not be interrupted during updates, an ESP8266 wifi module attached to an arduino board is not an option for me.

So I wonder if I can wire up two boards and simulate push of buttons from nodemcu to arduino mega.

Thank you all in advance.

2

Not sure I'm getting what you are saying there. is attaching two boards together an option or not ?

to your more general point

  • there are port expanders that you can attach to a board which will let you drive different actions. Keeping the design to 1 board will save you headaches.

  • you can join 2 boards. a bit of care has to be applied esp. if they work at different voltage. (you can use a "voltage level shifter")

3

Hi @ardaelliott
How about using ESP32 which has many GPIOS?

4

Saying "an ESP8266 attached to an arduino board is not an option for me" I meant not the breakout nodemcu board but the wifi module itself is not an option. And the necessity of uninterrupted operations is missed when the job is done without nodemcu and with voltage level shifters..

5

Yes, but again, uninterrupted operations is not possible with a single board that shuts all logic voltage during update..

6

Quite so, that is confusing the capabilities of the two platforms.

That is where the port expanders come in.

That would be singularly poor design.

You should not need to update the code at all. The " task schedule updates" should be just that - updating a task list, not a piece of code.