When I was a kid electronics were something you saved your meagre earnings to splurge on at Active Electronics. A breadboard, a z80, that was 2 months sweat. You’d get a little baggie with a pink foam and black chip in it. A couple of Forrest Mims notebooks and you were off. This was technically not pre-Internet, but it was pre-Internet for me for sure [ ~1982].
Fast forward to now, its science-fiction. Check out the below. $4 including postage, it arrives at my home. Its a bit smaller than a sim-card [those are 5mm grids]. And its Internet wifi enabled and will run python. This enables anyone to get in the game and start IoT-ising their universe. Want to make your garage door opener smart? Get an HC-SR04 for $1 from Aliexpress [to see when the door is open vs closed], a 3.3V powersupply, and solder to your ‘button’, you are done.
Now, I run Home Assistant and MQTT (Mosquito). This makes it really simple to have sensors, automation everywhere, with a simple web interface to see what it decided you needed.
So, back to the IoT and security and the enemy. $5 and a couple of hours, and i have my garage door ready to be opened from anywhere in the world. Of course i spent the time to give it strong auth and good encryption right? What if i had bought this as a kit, what sw would have been in that widget? Would it have been like the sous-vide?
This ESP8266 family is a great enabler. There is no excuse for anything not having an IP address now as far as I can see. And its strong enough you can secure it. But will you?
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