It may be used either to read voltage at ADC pin, or to read module supply voltage (VCC). Automation as a concept is defined by intelligent actions coordinated by time or in time. On the ESP8266, all you need is an Internet connection: you can just ask a time server what time it is. Then, the easiest way to generate interrupts without any additional hardware is to connect and disconnect the ground pin of the ESP8266 to the GPIO with the interrupt routine configured. The second type of timer is a hardware based timer, hw_timer, of which there is apparently only one. It includes calls for hardware timers (hw_timer_init(), hw_timer_arm(), hw_timer_set_func()). NTPClientLib from German Martin, it is based on the official Time library for Arduino. But what I want it to do is to only show the current hour, not everything. ESP8266 With Apple HomeKit without Homebridge I made a project with ESP8266 and 4 relay module that supports the IOS ecosystem with HomeKit enabled. Esp8266 schedule timer However, the ESP8266 would still wake up as you can only define a deep sleep interval not a deep sleep schedule.