TrigBoard – Ultra low power ESP8266 IoT platform

The trigBoard is an IoT project that does one thing – it pushes you a notification triggered by a digital input. Well, it’s much more than that, but this is the inspiration. I wanted to design a WiFi board that essentially sleeps most of its life, but when that door switch, flood sensor, motion sensor, etc.. gets triggered, I just want a notification immediately on my phone. And that’s about it… a perfect IoT device in the background doing its job.

Features

• Simple IoT development board that was designed to trigger “Push Notifications” on a smart phone/tablet based on a trigger event.
• Unique low-power front-end to enable sub 1uA sleep current – uses a pulse to trigger wake-up, so even if door/window/etc is opened, the same ultra low currents can be maintained. Compare to standard pull-up/down resistor based digital input designs with significantly higher leakage current.
• The board will wake itself up once an hour to check the battery voltage – if running low, a push notification is sent to warn the user. This timer can be used to check other things as well – temperature changes, accelerometers, or other environmental sensors.
• Based on ESP8266 WiFi Module (ESP-12S) – all source code is available for download and developed in the popular Arduino IDE.
• Battery Input can be any Lithium Polymer 3.7V – standard micro JST connector jack is used (please double check polarity),any of these would work nicely.
• Sensor input to trigger the “Wake Up” is a simple passive switch. Typically a standard magnetic door/window switch is used and the board can be configured to wake on the “opening” (Normally Closed) or “closure” (Normally Open) of the contact. Solder jumpers set this – Normally Closed is Default, so standard door/window switches wake the board up when opened.
• Battery Charging On-Board via MicroUSB – set for 4.2V at 500mA. 5V input pads broken out for energy harvesting experimentation.
• Dimensions only 0.8″ x 1.6 ” (20.32mm x 40.64mm)

The board is currently on sale on Tindie for $20.

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