IoT Connect is an open-source IoT platform built on top of esp8266, which allow users to connect and control their home appliance remotely in the most efficient manner.

This project is mainly divided into 3 major sections i.e., Hardware, Firmware, and Web UI.

Hardware:

The hardware is built on top of ESP8266 and 74HC595N shift register, which enables to use of only 3 GPIO to control 8 devices. Because of this, we are left with extra GPIO that can be used for another purpose such as connecting sensors. This device also includes sensors such as DHT11, which allows us to measure the current room temperature and humidity of the room, and an LDR (Light-dependent resistor) which helps us to measure the room luminance.

               With these sensors, we can automate the appliances with 3rd party services such as IFTTT or Adafruit IO. This hardware includes a 5v power supply onboard so that the user does need not to install additional power adapters to power the device. The only input that we must provide is a 110v-220v AC supply.

               This device also includes 2 tact switches, one to reset the ESP, and the other is connected to GPIO, which can be programmed for taking user inputs or resetting the device.

Firmware:

IoT Connect Firmware is built using the Arduino framework and can run independently or in sync with the IoT Connect Web applications. It’s also designed in a way that it can be flashed onto any other available IoT smart switches, such as Sonoff devices or Tuya devices.

Flashing the firmware:

To flash the firmware, you can first download it from here. This will provide you with 2 files:

• firmware.bin (The main file which includes the functionality)
• spiffs.bin (UI file, which includes the HTML, JS, and CSS files)

Just flash the firmware.bin file onto the ESP8266 with the help of the FTDI programmer via the exposed programming pins. You can use Tasmotizer included in the firmware repo to flash the firmware.bin onto the esp8266. Once the flashing is done, we are ready to turn on the device.

This firmware provides us multiple features as below:

Captive Portal:

After flashing the firmware once you turn on the device, ESP will host its own access point, named “IoT Connect” and this access point can be used to perform its initial setup.

You can either connect a laptop or an android/ios phone to this AP. Just after Wi-Fi is connected, a webpage will popup (or browse 192.168.4.1 from a web browser) which will show a setup screen as below.

Here you can either update the firmware.bin via OTA or proceed to the next step by uploading the second file i.e., spiffs.bin. Once the SPIFFS is flashed, the device will reboot and host its webpage.

This is the page where you have to provide device configurations. The first setting is the MQTT broker. If you want to connect to IoT Connect web UI, let the selected option be as it is, or if you want to connect to any other MQTT server, such as Adafruit.io or HiveHQ, etc. then select 2nd option i.e., Custom. Here you can provide MQTT details of the MQTT server.

You can also select N/A if you want to keep the device isolated from any cloud services.

In the second dropdown, select the type of device you have flashed this firmware on. If using the same device mentioned in this project, then select “IoT Connect Board Rev 2” and click on save. After this device will again reboot and the webpage will refresh.

Wi-Fi:

 Now the second step is to connect to home Wi-Fi. Go to the WiFi tab and click on scan, select the AP you want to connect, enter the WiFi password and click on Update Wifi.

A prompt will ask you to make sure you have entered the correct details. Click on Ok, and the device will reboot.

In case you have entered the wrong details, then the ESP spiffs will be erased, and you have to upload the spiffs.bin again and start over.

Authentication:

Once the Wi-Fi settings are saved and the device rebooted successfully, The webpage will be redirected to ESP’s local web address, and an authentication prompt will appear.

The default username and password are “admin/admin”. Enter the same then you will see the list of toggle switches that can control the corresponding relays.

You can select the relay from the dropdown in case you want to toggle it from the tact switch.

IoT Connect firmware also shows each and every command that flows back and forth via MQTT to keep the user informed about what information is going on to the cloud server. You can click on the "open Debug Console" button to check the flow of data.

Here "ESP_SENSOR" and "ESP_ATTENDENCE" are the topics on which corresponding JSON data is pushed.

You can also modify the authentication username and password from the Security tab.

Alexa:

IoT Connect firmware comes inbuilt with Alexa support. Just go to the Alexa tab and you can configure 3 different relays that can be discovered and controlled by Alexa devices connected to the same network.

Device Status:

To get the device status, you can check the Status tab which will provide some useful information such as local URL, Wi-Fi SSID, MQTT Status, Wi-Fi Strength, and temperature + Humidity + Illuminance readings from the sensor. 

The best part of the IoT Connect firmware is that the UI connects to the module via Web Sockets, so the data such as signal strength and sensor readings, that you see on the Web UI will update asynchronously without refreshing the page. This helps to reduce the load on the ESP webserver.

Device Configurations:

The last tab is the device tab, and from this tab, you can perform basic operations such as reset, reboot, update, or re-configure settings (such as MQTT server or change device type) on the device.

This tab also allows you to connect the IoT Connect firmware to IoT Connect Web UI.

Just click on the Re-Configure Device Button -> Pair with IoT Connect

This will redirect you to a webpage where you have to provide the credentials for the IoT Connect account and click on Add Device.

On the next page give your device a name and select the room to which you want to add this device and click on Add Device.

(Rooms will be explained in the below section of IoT Connect Web App)

On the next page, you must press and release the tact switch on the device once or twice to complete the sync process.

Then you will be redirected to IoT Connect Web Application.

IoT Connect Web Application:

IoT Connect web application is designed to be very simple and informative. You can access the web app from this URL (https://iot-connect.in).

First, you need to create an account and then sign in. Once you are signed in, you have to go to the control panel and create a room.

To these rooms, devices can be added as mentioned above. Once the device is added, you can see a green globe symbol next to the device name, which means the device is online and connected.

In case the device is offline, the globe symbol will be red, and time will be displayed, when the device was offline.

On clicking the device tab, a control panel will be opened and maximized from where you can see the same number of switches as relays on the board. You can toggle these switches to toggle relays on the board. The only difference here will be that this connection is via MQTT, and relays can be controlled from anywhere in the world. You can access the IoT Connect website from anywhere and control the relays.

Along with that, this webpage will also show the sensor readings in the form of charts and gauges.

These readings can be recorded here by clicking the start button under recordings. The recordings can run only for 1 hr. max. Further, these recordings can be downloaded in form of CSV or can be viewed as graphs.

You can rename the relay names by clicking on N.C. and providing a new name in the popup. The same name will also be discovered by Alexa devices once the IoT Connect Smart Home skill is activated.

The best part of this web application is that multiple users can share one device, and the user who adds the device for the first time will be the owner of the device. If another user will add the same device, then a request will be sent to the owner to approve the access. This access can be taken back from the shared users from the accounts section.

IoT Connect also supports push notifications, so if any user will toggle the relays, then the notification will be sent to every user sharing that device. You can disable this notification from the Account section.

You will also find IoT Connect Smart Home Skill on the Alexa skill store. This skill will allow you to control relays from Alexa devices that are not in the same network as that of the IoT Connect board.