For those curious about the ESP8266, it's a 5$ Chinese wifi module which initially had limited/no English documentation. But now people are working on translating and testing the module[1]. Alternatives based on the TI chip from Adafruit and Sparkfun, for example, are about 35$ (with the chip by itself costing around 15$).
You can get modules even cheaper than $5 on certain sites, I think mine cost around $3 from Taobao, which makes it very tempting (the chip itself is even cheaper still).
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For those curious about the ESP8266, it's a 5$ Chinese wifi module which initially had limited/no English documentation. But now people are working on translating and testing the module[1]. Alternatives based on the TI chip from Adafruit and Sparkfun, for example, are about 35$ (with the chip by itself costing around 15$).
[1] http://hackaday.com/2014/09/06/the-current-state-of-esp8266-...
[2] http://www.adafruit.com/products/1469
[3] https://www.sparkfun.com/products/12072
You can get modules even cheaper than $5 on certain sites, I think mine cost around $3 from Taobao, which makes it very tempting (the chip itself is even cheaper still).