Raspberry Pi Pico: WiFi part 2, Deep Sleep!

We continue our experiments WiFi enabling the Raspberry Pi Pico by developing out our software into something much useful and enabling deep sleep mode on the ESP01 to save loads of power. Source code available on my github page at github.com/tin...
Part One • Raspberry Pi Pico gets...

[@KyleMerl]

I'm so glad I found your channel. I'm trying to figure out how to send the temperature from the Pico as a post request to an API endpoint to record it into a database. This video got me a couple of steps closer to that. Thanks!

[@tinkertechtrove2910]

You're welcome, and good luck

[@gorannikolic5004]

Thank you very much. Without you I would be absolutely lost

[@paulgeare6035]

Well done Tim. Another stunningly helpful video (with high production value),

[@aswinvt]

Hello Tim, Great video! Now I'm you 645th subscriber 😝, hope to see these kind of great content from you!

[@preraktimbadiya]

Hey Tim, why not a video on sending strings from a mobile phone to the Pico via the ESP-01? Am a beginner, so, I um... need help on that.

[@DownunderGraham]

Thanks for the video. It was both interesting and useful. I am fine on the software side, but still learning about the hardware. I’m figuring out how to build an automatic door for my chicken shed. I also have a ventilation window that I want to control based on the temperature inside the roosting area. I looked at the Arduino options, but I have a fondness for the Pi family so I thought I’d try the Pi Pico. Not only do I want to control the motors but I’d also like to send status updates via wifi on events. As I need both a motor controller and a wifi capability, I’ve been trying to figure out how to wire up both. So far I think I’m going to need 2 motor controls, 4 inputs for micro switches (2 limit switches per motor), the wifi integration and some sort of temperature sensor integration and a photo sensor input (to open the door in the morning and close in the evening). The whole lot will be powered off a 12v battery and a solar panel. I have a charge controller to manage the panel, battery and load, so I now just have to build up the electronics (load) to do the work.

[@anDromedaIOT]

Awesome again, http over wifi on a £1.50 board! I have a json rest server, (nodejs + express) . Whats the best way to read json from the ESP? Is there a packet length max? The response is from my GPS chip and not massive but a few hundred lines of json per read. I assume there is method can send headers and GET/POST the request. Will do this project next week in the bank holiday.

[@tinkertechtrove2910]

Good luck with your project, I don't actually know the size limits as I'm only ever sending small messages. The responses are buffered on the ESP01 and Pico though, so at the very least memory limits will apply

[@Mr.Leeroy]

Neat. if that Serial code had CRC checks, it would have been beyond awesome.

[@cuttawayproductions3438]

Another great video. Thank you!!

[@redxtreme2598]

Wow you make this look so easy. Thank you

[@LorenzoClemente]

it's nice to see all of this running together, however it is not clear whether it is worth to split the logic of the program between the Pico and the ESP8266, while one could just use AT commands to operate the ESP8266 with its default firmware

[@zyghom]

man, that is what I was looking for - so if I get it correctly (for my project): 1- build some sensors around Pico (i.e. outdoor temp/hum/press/light sensors) 2- connect it to ESP and put together 3- give them LiPo battery - all will be powered from this battery and left somewhere outside (maybe with some solar charging if needed or not) 4- Pico will collect data from sensors and i.e. every minute will send via ESP to the gathering data server (i.e. Raspberry Pi4 or so at home or even somewhere in the cloud) - then again ESP sleeps, Pico collects further 5- after a minute it all repeats Considering Pico + sensors don't eat too much of power (that is another question to be checked: how much of power Pico with sensors will need) and ESP is only awake for the time of transmission, the entire project should be low power remote sensor. Am I getting this idea right? Thx for video and explanation

[@tinkertechtrove2910]

Yes that would be a good application for this setup 👍

[@hamzadlm6625]

@@tinkertechtrove2910 Hello, am creating the same project our friend is talking about, but when I tried DHT11 with ESP01S, I got an InvalidPulseCount on the DHT (82 instead of 84 pulse), I do not get this error if I run DHT alone. Do you have any insight on this behavior please ?

[@jamesharris6062]

Hi nice video . Leds with mosfit Would put down what you used with your mosfit faret 100 ? And wire diagram as would like make my own Leds stripe work

[@eezees9306]

When I tried to verify the code for the ESP-01 I got an error: for line 45, "if (http.begin(url)) { // HTTP" when I replaced the line with: "if (http.begin(client, url)) { // HTTP" it worked.

[@daviddoidge1252]

I also have "old ESP01" needed to fit 1K resistors between VCC / CH_PD and RST as you suggested......But I also had to change "Builtin Led" in the sketch tools menu from "2" to "1"

[@tinkertechtrove2910]

Thanks for the extra info David, much appreciated. I will update the code on GHE with a comment to help others trying this 👍

[@burtonrodman]

what am i missing?? the title says raspberry pi pico but he’s talking about ESP01

[@lenzkappovfood7001]

Hi Tim, Please can you advise what packages you installed to get the pi server working, i.e.to get import http.server and import socketserver working. Thanks LKF

[@tinkertechtrove2910]

Nothing out of the usual, but make sure your running python 3 and not python 2 (python3 command).

[@chullenmn]

Very good info. I would like to see how can the PICO push DHT22 data to MYSQL via the ESP01 for a weather station. I am just a hobbyist and I am new to Python and with little knowledge on Arduino IDE. I don't know how to coding in python. It would be great if you could do a video on that. Thanks.

[@daveflatters4981]

How did you discover your ESP-01 was enhanced and not a regular ESP-01. I’ve noticed my “Regular ESP-01” shows a higher flash available.

[@tinkertechtrove2910]

There are illustrations of the board physical differences online, though that's not completely reliable. Larger flash memory is normally a strong indicator that you have the newer version.

[@daveflatters4981]

Thanks for the quick reply. I also found an example sketch that checks the config and that said it was 1 Mb as well

[@daviddoidge1252]

Hi, can you explain the "simple server" part and what you mean by "send a message" ? I get the "Ready" text and the "Send msg ...." text but then nothing ?

[@tinkertechtrove2910]

The simple server is just a local web server running on the target host (IP sent from the Pico) You don't need it if you already have a http server you want to talk to, it was just for the demo.

[@tinkertechtrove2910]

I may have deleted your message by mistake, sorry! Please repost and I'll try to answer

[@daviddoidge1252]

@@tinkertechtrove2910 Hi, finally got it working.

[@jamesshapter3157]

@@daviddoidge1252 Hi, David. What was the problem in the end? I am also getting stuck on "send msg ....".

[@jamesshapter3157]

Never mind. Just didn't have my ssid/password setup properly!

[@MicrobyteAlan]

I’m getting caught up. 👋🏽

[@hzrnbugsie]

Is it truly a "Deep Sleep" mode if you are literally shutting down the core? My point is, if it takes a "Reset" to start it up again, then all the previous states were lost, and you have to go through initialization again.

[@tinkertechtrove2910]

The core is not fully shutdown, you can check the reason for the reset using ESP.getResetReason() and adjust your startup logic if you want to do specific stuff when waking up. See the LowPowerDemo in ESP8266 SDK for many other examples of this. (I should say I have not tested this though)

[@StefanoZamprogno]

Now the question/problem is... how much consume the Pico in deep sleep ? :-)

[@tinkertechtrove2910]

Maybe a topic for a future video :-) the data sheet has some interesting numbers.