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SILICON SILIC CHIP www.siliconchip.com.au Publisher Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD Editor Nicholas Vinen Technical Editor John Clarke, B.E.(Elec.) Technical Staff Jim Rowe, B.A., B.Sc Bao Smith, B.Sc Tim Blythman, B.E., B.Sc Technical Contributor Duraid Madina, B.Sc, M.Sc, PhD Art Director & Production Manager Ross Tester Reader Services Ann Morris Advertising Enquiries Glyn Smith Phone (02) 9939 3295 Mobile 0431 792 293 glyn<at>siliconchip.com.au Regular Contributors Dave Thompson David Maddison B.App.Sc. (Hons 1), PhD, Grad.Dip.Entr.Innov. Geoff Graham Associate Professor Graham Parslow Ian Batty Cartoonist Brendan Akhurst Silicon Chip is published 12 times a year by Silicon Chip Publications Pty Ltd. ACN 003 205 490. ABN 49 003 205 490. All material is copyright ©. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Subscription rates: $105.00 per year in Australia. For overseas rates, see our website or the subscriptions page in this issue. Editorial office: Unit 1 (up ramp), 234 Harbord Rd, Brookvale, NSW 2100. Postal address: PO Box 139, Collaroy Beach, NSW 2097. Phone (02) 9939 3295. E-mail: silicon<at>siliconchip.com.au Printing and Distribution: Derby Street, Silverwater, NSW 2148. Editorial Viewpoint New blood at Silicon Chip This month I am delighted to welcome two new members to the Silicon Chip editorial team, Tim Blythman and Duraid Madina. Tim has hit the ground running as he is responsible for two projects in this issue. Duraid is a part-time technical contributor who is already busy beavering away on a couple of state-ofthe-art projects which should come to fruition later this year. We are really looking forward to presenting them for your enjoyment. Both these new team members should greatly expand our expertise and “project generating” capacity and we look forward to a whole range of interesting new possibilities. Just one of these new possibilities involves more projects based on the ESP8266 (and related) chips. That’s because these offer an ease-of-use that’s similar to the Arduino Uno but with inbuilt WiFi, a lot more flash memory and a much faster CPU. In effect, you get an Arduino-compatible processor with WiFi but in a smaller, more powerful package – all for a similar or, in some cases, lower price. The fact that the same chip is available in a range of form factors, from the Uno-compatible D1 R2, to the smaller but equally capable D1 Mini, and even the tiny ESP-01, means they are especially flexible. But it’s the inbuilt WiFi, with easy-to-use libraries, that’s really the “killer” feature. It makes it so easy and cheap to design projects that fetch data from or upload data to internet servers and that opens up a huge range of possibilities. It can also allow us to control our designs from a smartphone. The WiFi Water Tank Level Meter presented in the February issue has turned out to be very popular. The prototype is in use on my rainwater tank at home. In this current prolonged dry period in Sydney it has been an important reference for me to determine how much to water the garden. I can easily check the water level from the office using my phone. Still on these WiFi modules, one of the great things about using the Arduino IDE to program many of the ESP8266 boards is that all you need to re-program it is a PC (Windows, Linux or macOS) and a USB cable. And given that many of our designs can be expanded for uses other than those they were intended for, I hope that readers take advantage of this capability to extend our concepts. After all, we make the source code available and there’s nothing stopping you from modifying the code to add new features. If you do manage to enhance or adapt one of our designs to another application, please write in and let us know. It could even be the subject of a new project article or an item in Silicon Chip. Consider that we do pay for article contributions. If you don’t have any programming experience, Arduino is a good place to start. While it may seem more daunting than learning a language like BASIC, the C family of languages it is based on are probably the most widely-used programming language in existence; your time learning it will be well spent. And there are a huge number of pre-written libraries available for a range of tasks, so you don’t have to waste your time “re-inventing the wheel”. Finally, I hope that our Australian and New Zealand readers will enjoy combing through the latest Jaycar catalog included with this issue. We always enjoy such catalogs included in the magazine, since even in these days of internet searching, nothing can match the convenience of a printed catalog that you can refer to at any time. You never know when you will come across a nifty little gadget or component which will be of great use. ISSN 1030-2662 Recommended & maximum price only. 2 Silicon Chip Nicholas Vinen Celebrating 30 Years siliconchip.com.au