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.
The ESP8266 WiFi module is a slight deviation from this trend, with hundreds of different ESP dev boards floating around, and weirdos buying them by the bag. [4ndreas] finally found the ESP8266 in ...
If you already have a ton of smart home devices and you're wondering what to do next, I recommend picking up an ESP8266.