Communication Channels Review For ESP Module Using Arduino IDE And NodeMCU

Abstract

Purpose: Wireless communication is a common scenario in our everyday lives. There are several strong reasons why wired communication is becoming obsolete. Every day, in every field, devices are becoming wifi, the primary communication medium. The researcher is also integrating the Wifi into their project. In the Wi-Fi category, the ESP module from Espressif Systems is the most popular in the embedded world. Several board variations and modes of communication are also available. When we integrated the ESP module into our project, we faced several challenges due to the vast amount of information available over the net. Finding a workable code is a time-consuming task. Here, for the researcher, we provide a summary of the Esp module communication in various forms. All provided codes are tested in our labs and available on the Github repository for easy integration.

Design/Methodology/Approach: we created the software environment to test each communication channel. We use an ESP8266-based NodeMCU module. We use our online server to test the communication channels in several scenarios. A fiber optic backbone was used to get better performance. To program the nodemcu, we used Arduino IDE. It is a popular and rapid prototyping platform. The two modules were used for client-server communication.

Findings/Result: we tested various communication modes available for the NodeMCU module. To avoid communication latency, we integrate a high-bandwidth internet backbone. Among the available modes, we found that an MQTT performs better response. The other modes suffer data updation delays due to inherent protocol overhead. For real-time sensor applications, the lite weight MQTT protocol is the best way to integrate it into our research.

Originality/Value/ Novelty: The ESP module has been used in various research projects for decades. There are plenty of documents available around the globe.  But the scenario is that when we start finding the effective code for our research project, most of the time, it consumes our valuable time. We need to provide the tested code to the researcher. So through this research work, the researcher can get esp module tested code for the available mode of communication.

Type of Paper: Experimental-based Research.