Project: Play a Spotify playlist by pressing a button on an Arduino board.
Button → WiFi module → Custom iOS → Spotify
My question concerns the Sparkfun Thing vs. Sparkfun Thing Development board. What’s the major difference between the two? As a beginner to Arduino and this world, I can’t seem to understand how they differ just based on the product pages on the site / videos on YouTube by Sparkfun. Also, if there are any major differences, is there anything I should consider with this specific project in mind?
The major difference is that the Development board has a USB-to-Serial converter on board. So you don’t need a FTDI cable or other similar USB-to-Serial converter to communicate with a USB host. The ESP has the reset-from-sleep pin neatly broken out to solder in some jumper pins to connect it with reset. (The non-dev board needs a wire soldered from mid-board RST to XPD on the side) And it has a different circuit to auto-reset and auto-program which I haven’t figured out yet how this works. Neither would impact the goal of your project I think. This is mostly for ease in debugging. I don’t see the need for an additional Arduino board, since the ESP can be programmed to operate as one with the IDE. But a ESP-01 would suffice a bit better if it must be small. (But that is harder to solder to make it sleep)
I have no clue how to interface with iOS or Spotify. So I can’t help with that.