Recommended hardware when starting from scratch

Boards
1

At this point in time, what is the best hardware to use to implement OMG on? In particular, devices that are more plug and play than development boards… I know the Sonoff RF Bridge is a near ready-to-go device, but it’s not the easiest device to find in the US compared to the scores of dev boards out there. Is there a good ESP32 or ESP8266 (or ESP8285, which some more recent devices are switching to) that has all the IO easily exposed, and is relatively ready to go, just plug the various modules in? Ideally without needing to solder anything, just wire it up, apply power, flash, and go.

Can commonly available hardware that contain an ESP8285 chip, like the Sonoff Basic, be used? These devices seem to operate on 3v3, so that may not be compatible with RF modules that want 5v, but are otherwise self-contained, with power, the ESP chip, and a limited amount of GPIO accessible.

Any suggestions?

2

Hello,

The board to choose depends on your needs, do you want to use wifi or ethernet ? Are you thinking of using ble or only RF ?
Regarding complexity to setup i think arduino mega with an ethernet shield is the most easiest to go due to the arduino ide native support. After i would say the esp8266 with a nodemcu v2 board and finaly an esp32 devkit.
Esp32 is clearly at this time the most difficult to setup due to the relative freshness of the arduino software environment.

Sonoff basic is compatible with OMG you have indeed to choose modules compatible with 3v3.

Regards