 I'm Chris of FilmsByChris.com. Link in the description. This is my second channel on hardware and today I'm going to talk about a little device here that we're going to be using in a lot of projects. This is an ESP8266. Basically it's a microcontroller with Wi-Fi built-in. Think of it as basically an Arduino with Wi-Fi built-in. Now what's great about this is you have plenty of GPIO pins so you can get inputs and then send outputs to many devices but again since it has Wi-Fi you can connect to it pretty much from anywhere in the world using your smartphone, laptop, desktop, whatever you have, whatever device you have connected to Wi-Fi you can send and receive stuff to this device. Now one of the great things about this device is that it's super cheap. Now this one I bought off Amazon for $8 and that was with two-day Prime shipping. I saw pretty much the same exact module on eBay for $4 with free shipping but that was coming from China and it was going to take about two months for me to get it. So I paid the extra $4 to get it in two days so that I could do this video and there are other versions of it because there's many different models of this that can get even cheaper for like two or three dollars. The main difference between this module and those modules is this one's called a development board and the big difference here is it has USB, micro USB built in here as long as well as buttons to reset and flash it. With the other ones, the cheaper ones, you'll need a separate device to connect to it and program it and flash it and to me it's worth an extra two or three dollars to have that built in because I also like to power these things using cell phone chargers rather than having to wire into this with a different charger. So yeah for a couple dollars anywhere from three to eight dollars depending on how in depth you want to get, you can get one of these devices. You can set it up to be a web server or a web client so you can have scripts run on it or programs run on it and so yeah you plug it in it's almost instantly on it takes a few seconds to connect to your network and you're up and going and you can have a full-blown server running that you can connect to with your smartphone tablet or any internet device and again what we're going to be using this a lot for is in conjunction with a relay and if you've watched some of my videos on hardware stuff almost everything you're going to be doing is turning stuff on and off whether you're opening a garage door unlocking your car door turning on your air conditioner turning lights on and off you're just turning something on and off with a switch which is what a relay is and you can get a relay for a dollar or two. So for under ten dollars you can have an internet ready device that you can turn things on and off unlock doors open doors bunch of stuff under ten dollars you can do it from your smartphone or tablet without having to install anything you just point your web browser at this device and you're good to go so just wanted to give you a little preview of this device we'll talk about it because we are going to be using it a lot in a lot of projects because I love controlling things wirelessly and although there's other ways of communicating which we might get into in future when it comes to things like Bluetooth or other wireless modules again this is super simple if you're not deep into hardware stuff you've probably if you've done any type of program you understand HTML and HTTP and so very easy and again once it's connected to your network you can open up a port on your router and it's accessible from anywhere in the world that you have an internet connection to so definitely definitely a great option and again this is an ESP 8266 module they come in a variety of formats again this one I'll try to put a link in the description I get on Amazon for eight dollars with two-day shipping or on eBay currently for four dollars but you're gonna have to wait a month or two to get it but I have two of these and I've been using them for small projects and I'm loving it so thanks for watching as always this is my second channel which is on hardware stuff be sure to check out my first channel there should be a link to that in the description if you're more student software side of things and also check out my website filmsbychris.com that's Chris with the K there's a link to that in the description there you can search through all my videos from both channels as well as get a link to the RSS feed to answer your RSS reader so that you can keep up to date on both my channels be sure to subscribe like comment share all that good stuff it does help me out especially with this being a new channel and as always I hope that you have a great day