Driving Triac with ESP8266

[samehhady]

Hello,
First of all thank you for your great work.

I want to ask if it is possible to drive a Triac and dim 220v lamp directly with ESP8266 without using MCU
Can I use the PWN functionality to achieve this?
Can you please provide me with some hints on how to do it?

[nodemcu]

You can using pwm or set gpio high or low without using a extra MCU.
But esp8266 can not drive a Triac DIRECTLY I think.
Some driver/buffer may needed between esp8266 and Triac, I guess.

[samehhady]

aaah too bad, it would be great if I could drive it directly :(

[Toshik]

Use triac driver like moc3023 - it is designed to drive triac by any MCU, otherwise you will damage your device

[samehhady]

Thx Toshik for the info, will I be able to directly control the moc3023 with the ESP? or will I need MCU?
If it is possible can you show me a quick snippet on how to control it?

[Toshik]

Yes, you can drive MOC3023 directly by ESP - by fact ESP acts like MCU.
It is pretty simple - use it like common LED by switch on/off any GPIO.

Here is common connection diagram: http://home.comcast.net/~donlaw/lights/mocschem.gif

[samehhady]

Thank you Toshik!, you are the man ;)