The ESP8266 is a chip that turned a lot of heads recently, stuffing a WiFi radio, TCP/IP stack, and all the required bits to get a microcontroller on the Internet into a tiny, $5 module.

That's where an ESP8266 comes in. It's basically a Wi-Fi microcontroller that you can hook up to more or less anything, and there are a few reasons why you should consider it as the centerpiece of ...