Hello There,
I am looking for advice. I am wondering if anyone in the community has some tips on the best kits for building IOT devices from Node Mcu or similar boards. Right now I am buying all the individual parts like wires transistors etc. separately, it would be nice to buy them together as a kit. Any ideas or links to kits that come with some good options would be great. I know they can be more expensive than buying each item individually but I am looking for convenience. Thanks in advance
Hi, I guess it depends on what you want to do. I personally like Wemos boards which I get to communicate with HA via MQTT.
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MQTT would be the easiest way for the two to communicate but it depends on what your goals are. Do you want to build an app for your device? Do you want realtime processing of the data for the device on HA or somewhere else? Is this meant to be a plug and play commercial device for the masses?
I’m building some devices based off of the esp-12f module and I’m using MQTT as it is fast and simple. It has its own issues though like security.
This isn’t a cheap kit but is general enough to get you started in many topics:
The thing to remember about these kits is to remember that these breakout boards are meant to make connecting these modules together a little easier but in doing so, they can make reducing the final device you create to a single board much harder.
I suppose a better question we could ask you is how comfortable with electronics are you?
Mainly looking to use MQTT I have a couple nodemcu already running in my house. I am just looking for kits that might offer a bunch of different items including bread boards transistors jumpers and so forth so I don’t have to buy each individually every time I want to make something. I live in Ecuador and it can be hard to come across certain things.
This is kinda what I am looking for. Looking at options. I am becoming more comfortable with electronics with every passing project.
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Awesome! Ok, this helps a bit.
If I may, I’ll recommend a few other resources that you may already know about but in case you don’t…
Instructables.com has a range of classes in addition to an enormous amount of user supplied how-tos on just about anything you need to know.
http://www.instructables.com/class/Internet-of-Things-Class/
Also, there is Udemy with a number of electronics classes. Again, wide ranging topics and when you catch a sale, you can get courses for around $10-$20US.
Additionally, watch this site as from time to time they post current technical books that you can get for very little money. The last set I purchased from there was on python programming. Just FYI…
I hope these are useful.
Cheers!
This is super helpful thanks.
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Good. I wish I had a great go to for component parts. I tend to get them from all over. When I’m prototyping a project, I don’t worry about the cost as much and I use Amazon.com, adafruit.com or sparkfun.com for one off buys.
For bulking up on component parts I use parts suppliers like mouser.com or digikey.com. I’m in the states so my choices may not be the best for you. The kit I posted above is just one. There are dozens of them available.
One other spot to find parts and kits is through banggood.com. Takes a long time to get stuff from them but it is inexpensive and they do have lots of different types of kits like this:
https://www.banggood.com/Wemos-D1-Mini-Kit-Mini-NodeMcu-4M-Bytes-Lua-WIFI-Internet-of-Things-Development-Board-Based-ESP8266-p-1110584.html
This is super helpful. I can order stuff and ship to the states but as I go home every so often or people come every so often I wanted to do a one stop shop. Thank you again
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