‘IoT Cricket’: An ESP8266-based Wi-Fi Module by ‘Things On Edge’

‘Things On Edge’ is a UK-based IoT company founded by Sylwester Bala and Piotr Lewandowski. Their aim is to help developers increase their productivity by providing them with easy-to-use, end-to-end technology, so that users no longer need to program IoT devices. Their flagship offering, IoT Cricket, has been recently featured in Practical Electronics, a premier electronics and computing maker magazine in the UK.

IoT Cricket is an ESP8266-based, easy-to-use Wi-Fi module consuming ultra-low power. It enables you to build various IoT devices in a few minutes, and power them directly on batteries, with literally no code and programming. In short, with IoT Cricket, you can:

• • connect devices to the Internet out-of-the-box, either from a smartphone or a laptop, using any web browser;
  • configure devices either locally or remotely;
  • integrate your devices into a huge IoT software ecosystem by using MQTT and HTTP communication protocols.

Key Features

• • Ultra-low power consumption, i.e. 0A current when not in operation
  • Operates directly on batteries below 3.5V (AA, AAA, etc.)
  • Configurable Analog or Digital inputs for sensors, buttons, and switches
  • Local configuration (directly on a Cricket Wi-Fi hotspot)
  • Remote configuration (from a TOE micro-service)
  • Configurable MQTT (using either a Things-On-Edge broker or any third-party MQTT broker)
  • Configurable secure / non-secure HTTP POST/GET requests
  • Configurable battery monitor
  • Built-in configurable Real-Time Clock (RTC) for regular wake-ups, with specified time intervals
  • Built-in configurable temperature sensor
  • Firmware updates

Below there are a few examples of what you can do with IoT Cricket:

• • Send notifications when someone is at your doorstep;
  • Ring your phone when someone presses a doorbell button;
  • Report the moisture levels in a flowerpot and raise an alarm on your phone when the moisture level goes below or above certain thresholds;
  • Report the temperature of a garden, home, room, etc.;
  • Report on the status of windows / doors, e.g. closed or open;
  • Report the triggering of your house’s alarm system, or just the detection of a suspicious move in a specified room, either by email or by ringing your phone;
  • Report noise detection.
  • There are literally endless application scenarios in relation to reporting data from any remote sensory devices.

Hardware Specifications

To get all the details about IoT Cricket, you can visit the official website of Things On Edge.