Tom Nardi- Hackaday
It’s really hard to overstate how awesome ESP8266 development boards like the Wemos D1 Mini really are. For literally a couple of dollars you can get a decently powerful Wi-Fi enabled microcontroller that has enough free digital pins to do some useful work. Like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi before it, the ESP8266 is a device that’s opening up whole new areas of hacking and development that simply weren’t as practical or cost-effective as previously.
As a perfect example, take a look at this stupendously simple Internet-connected motion detector that [Eric William] has come up with. With just a Wemos D1 Mini, a standard PIR sensor, and some open source code, you can create a practical self-contained motion sensor module that can be placed anywhere you want to keep an eye on. When the sensor picks up something moving, it will trigger an IFTTT event.