The ESPresso Lite As a low-cost, no-frills, Arduino-compatible Wi-Fi development board, the ESPresso Lite is designed to allow anyone to get started on building their very own Internet-of-Things (IoT) projects. The ESPresso Lite core hardware is a 32-bit 80 Mhz FCC/CE-certified ESP-WROOM-02 module (made by Espressif Systems).

Why do we make the ESPresso Lite The ESP8266 chipset took the market by storm when it was first introduce in late 2014 as the US$5 Wi-Fi chip. Since then there have been dozens of ESP8266 embedded hardware devices including modules, development board and to a certain extent, consumer products.

The idea of starting on this project was mooted right after my colleague, Jimmy and I visited Espressif Systems in July to formalize a tie-up to build a formal community support for makers who are keen to explore the Internet-of-Things (IoT) space.We realised that in order for us to better support makers to turn their ideas into tangible hardware products, we ourselves must also go through the process of building our own line of hardware.

Thus, ESPert was born out of the need to create a series of upstream, catalyst hardware and preferably consumer-grade off-the-shelf product that will allow makers and developers to rapidly develop hardware and solutions to their customers.

What makes it special? We designed the ESPresso Lite to use as little jumper wires or breadboard as possible. We re-arranged the I/O pins to allow direct connection of OLED display and Bluetooth LE modules. In addition, we also designed a Grove-compatible adaptor boards, allowing the ESPresso Lite to be connected to more than 100 sensors & actuators.

The hardware also comes with a supporting mobile app and free cloud service. The ESPresso Lite is an ongoing open-source project with the intent of providing makers with opportunities to build better and more robust IoT hardware for specific needs or purposes.