It Started With a Hardware Limitation I have been using Quectel GNSS modules in my designs for a while. They are reliable, well-documented, and the support ecosystem is solid. But the module I had been using had one problem that I kept running into: no external antenna support . For most projects that is a minor inconvenience. For a marine vessel monitoring and control system , it is a non-starter. A vessel hull blocks sky view, antenna placement is critical, and the difference between a clean fix and no fix at all often comes down to whether you can mount the antenna where it actually has line of sight. An integrated antenna in a sealed enclosure below deck simply does not cut it. So I went directly to Quectel. The Conversation With Quectel I reached out through their official sample request channel. I was not expecting much — most component manufacturers have a standard process: fill out a form, wait, get a few uni...
Its been a while i was searching for a cheap wifi module and with the help of smart-prototyping.com , i was able to get a module almost less than USD 5. To connect the module to breadboard for prototyping, i made a small jig to interconnect with the board easily. So i can wire up the device and interface anything to GPIO's. Be careful with the module cause the device it powered with 3.3V and both UART side levels will be 3.3V so i recommend to use a FTDI converter with 3.3V level select.(one i used can select 3.3 and 5 volts) if you connect 5V the module will fry up. If you have 5V or 12V supply to power up the module i suggest to use LD1117V33 to make 3.3V. The stock Firmware in the ESP8266 supports AT commands and for communicating with this need an micro-controller like Arduino. But i want to make a simple solution for that without using external micro-controller. NodeMCU firmware was the best thing i found. To upload the NodeMCU firmware please do a google sear...