The ESP8266

 Many long-time users of the Arduino platform are probably already familiar with the ESP8266.

It started out as a wifi-to-serial module you could hook up to your Arduino and send messages over wifi to your flashing LEDs and motor controllers.
Then it appeared as an integrated board, and multiple variations hit the market.
A common one is the NodeMCU and it's derivatives.




These are great little Arduino-compatible modules that you can set up in the Arduino IDE as programmable controllers (just like an AVR ATMEGA328 or similar microcontroller) but they have loads of other cool features (not least of all, multi-threading!)

But most of us stick to using them like a beefed-up Arduino (they have loads of RAM memory and plenty of programmable storage to run pretty sophisticated firmware on them).

It was while playing with one of these for a completely unrelated project, that I suddenly hit on the idea of having a "network" of board game playing surfaces, all broadcasting over wifi to a central point.
Each board could have it's own power supply (a rechargeable li-po battery for example) and could be placed entirely independently of any other board piece.

The project I'd been working on was actually a controller for a strip of RGB LEDs.
While that particular project was for controlling a single, long string of LEDs, my own interest in music and MIDI instruments had me wonder if I could cut a single strip up into a number of rows, if I could turn this into an array of controllable multi-coloured LEDs.

If that was the case, then I could use them to display a grid pattern, used to indicate drum beats and if I could add some buttons.... I could make my own MIDI pad, like a mini Novation Launchpad.


Which then got me reminiscing about a long-abandoned project that involved making an array of input sensors. Suddenly, I wasn't interested in making a MIDI "beats pad". I wanted to make a board game playing surface with light up squares!

 

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