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ESP8266 Home Automation Projects
ESP8266 Home Automation Projects

ESP8266 Home Automation Projects: Leverage the power of this tiny WiFi chip to build exciting smart home projects

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ESP8266 Home Automation Projects

Building and Configuring Your Own MQTT Server

Now that you have learned how to use analog and digital outputs, to send and receive data via Wi-Fi, it is time to move on the next part where you will discover the MQTT protocol and how to use it.

In the previous chapter the ESP8266 was only communicating with servers: in this chapter, we will see how ESP8266 modules can communicate with each other through Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT).

Message Queue Telemetry Transport

Usually, end devices have a limited memory and CPU power, running on batteries, so connecting them with servers requires a light protocol. Enter MQTT, which was invented in 1999 by Andy Stanford-Clark from IBM and Arlen Nipper from Arcom, a SCADA protocol design initially for battery operated devices to supervise oil pipelines. Later in 2010, IBM released it as a royalty-free protocol. In 2014, OASIS announced that the MQTT v.3.1.1 had become an OASIS standard and a lot of MQTT clients were developed for all programming languages.

The characteristics of MQTT are listed as follows:

  • Data agnostic: MQTT can transport all kind of data, from sensor data to images or over the air updates
  • Lightweight and bandwidth efficient: Smallest frame is only 2 bytes long
  • Provide QoS: Three Quality of Service (QoS) levels
  • Runs on top of the TCP/IP stack
  • Simple...

Introducing Mosquitto broker

Eclipse MosquittoTM is an open source MQTT broker that implements the MQTT v3.1 and MQTT v.3.1.1 standards and provides a lightweight method to transport messages, allowing publish and subscription for low power sensors, mobile devices, embedded computers, and micro controllers.

You can install Mosquitto on a Raspberry Pi or on AWS instance or on a VirtualBox Linux instance directly from your Linux repository distribution; or you can get the source code and compile it yourself if you want support from websockets.

Installing from your Linux distribution repository:

  1. First upgrade to the latest version:
    sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
  1. Then install mosquito:
    sudo apt install mosquitto  

You should see the following screen:

Installing Mosquitto
  1. After installing the Mosquitto broker verify that the broker is started and install...

ESP8266 and MQTT

To use the ESP8266 as a client for sending data to a broker you will need a library that offers MQTT support. For this you can use the PubSubClient library, which can be installed like other libraries; see Chapter 1, Getting Started with the ESP8266:

  1. Go to Sketch | Include Library | Manage Libraries..., as follows:
Manage libraries
  1. And search for the PubSubClient library and click Install as in the following screenshot:

Publishing data from the ESP8266

Start a new sketch via File | New in the Arduino IDE and paste in the following code. Include the ESP8266WiFi library and the PubSubClient one:

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h> 
#include <PubSubClient.h> 

Update these with values suitable for your network. Use ifconfig to get the IP address of the server where the Mosquitto broker is installed. If your server has an FQDN name such as myiotserver.com and is registered into the DNS, then instead of the IP address in mqtt_server you can use the FQDN name:

const char* wifi_network = "YOUR_WIFI_SSID"; 
const char* wifi_pass = "YOUR_WIFI_PASSWORD"; 
const char* mqtt_serv_address = "192.168.1.116"; 
const int mqtt_port_number = 1883; 

Instantiate a WiFiClient and pass it to the PubSubClient:

WiFiClient espClient; 
PubSubClient client(espClient); 
long lastMsg...

Receiving MQTT messages in the ESP8266

Now let's publish a message using mosquitto_pub and receive it in the ESP8266.

For this the ESP8266 needs to subscribe to the same topic on which mosquitto_pub will publish the message. Let's call the topic outdoor/light and it will publish on 0 or 1 values. If the ESP8266 receives the value as 1, it will turn on a LED connected to GPIO 12 and if it will receives a 0, it will turn off that LED:

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h> 
#include <PubSubClient.h> 

Update these with values suitable for your network:

 
const char* wifi_network= "YOUR_WIFI_SSID"; 
const char* password = "YOUR_WIFI_PASSWORD"; 
const char* mqtt_serv_address = "YOUR_MQTT_SERVER_IP"; 
const int mqtt_port_number = 1883; 
#define OUTDOOR_LIGHT  12 
 
WiFiClient  espClient; 
PubsubClient client(espClient); 
long lastMsg...

Message Queue Telemetry Transport


Usually, end devices have a limited memory and CPU power, running on batteries, so connecting them with servers requires a light protocol. Enter MQTT, which was invented in 1999 by Andy Stanford-Clark from IBM and Arlen Nipper from Arcom, a SCADA protocol design initially for battery operated devices to supervise oil pipelines. Later in 2010, IBM released it as a royalty-free protocol. In 2014, OASIS announced that the MQTT v.3.1.1 had become an OASIS standard and a lot of MQTT clients were developed for all programming languages.

The characteristics of MQTT are listed as follows:

  • Data agnostic: MQTT can transport all kind of data, from sensor data to images or over the air updates
  • Lightweight and bandwidth efficient: Smallest frame is only 2 bytes long
  • Provide QoS: Three Quality of Service (QoS) levels
  • Runs on top of the TCP/IP stack
  • Simple to develop: Clients exist for all operating systems and programming languages
  • Central broker: Can connect different devices...

Introducing Mosquitto broker


Eclipse MosquittoTM is an open source MQTT broker that implements the MQTT v3.1 and MQTT v.3.1.1 standards and provides a lightweight method to transport messages, allowing publish and subscription for low power sensors, mobile devices, embedded computers, and micro controllers.

You can install Mosquitto on a Raspberry Pi or on AWS instance or on a VirtualBox Linux instance directly from your Linux repository distribution; or you can get the source code and compile it yourself if you want support from websockets.

Installing from your Linux distribution repository:

  1. First upgrade to the latest version:
    sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade
  1. Then install mosquito:
sudo apt install mosquitto

You should see the following screen:

Installing Mosquitto

  1. After installing the Mosquitto broker verify that the broker is started and install mosquitto-clients as follows:

Verify if Mosquitto is running

  1. Type the following command:
sudo apt install mosquitto-clients

You will get the...

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Key benefits

  • Harness the power of the ESP8266 Wi-Fi chip to build an effective Home Automation System
  • Learn about the various ESP8266 modules
  • Configuring the ESP8266 and making interesting home automation projects
  • A step-by-step guide on the ESP8266 chip and how to convert your home into a smart home.

Description

The ESP8266 is a low-cost yet powerful Wi-Fi chip that is becoming more popular at an alarming rate, and people have adopted it to create interesting projects. With this book, you will learn to create and program home automation projects using the ESP8266 Wi-Fi chip. You will learn how to build a thermostat to measure and adjust the temperature accordingly and how to build a security system using the ESP8266. Furthermore, you will design a complete home automation system from sensor to your own cloud. You will touch base on data monitoring, controlling appliances, and security aspects. By the end of the book, you will understand how to completely control and monitor your home from the cloud and from a mobile application. You will be familiar with the capabilities of the ESP8266 and will have successfully designed a complete ready-to-sell home automated system.

Who is this book for?

This book is targeted at people who want to build connected and inexpensive home automation projects using the ESP8266 Wi-Fi chip, and to completely automate their homes. A basic understanding of the board would be an added advantage.

What you will learn

  • Get, compile, install, and configure an MQTT server
  • Use the Wi-Fi connectivity feature to control appliances remotely
  • Control several home appliances using the ESP8266 Wi-Fi chip
  • Control and monitor your home from the cloud using ESP8266 modules
  • Stream real-time data from the ESP8266 to a server over WebSockets
  • Create an Android mobile application for your project
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Publication date, Length, Edition, Language, ISBN-13
Publication date : Nov 28, 2017
Length: 196 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781787282629
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Product Details

Publication date : Nov 28, 2017
Length: 196 pages
Edition : 1st
Language : English
ISBN-13 : 9781787282629
Category :
Tools :

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Table of Contents

8 Chapters
Getting Started with the ESP8266 Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building and Configuring Your Own MQTT Server Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Building a Home Thermostat with the ESP8266 Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Control Appliances from the ESP8266 Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Using ESP8266 to Build a Security System Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Securing Your Data Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Real-Time Communication Chevron down icon Chevron up icon
Adding a Mobile Application to Your Smart Home Chevron down icon Chevron up icon

Customer reviews

Rating distribution
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon 4
(4 Ratings)
5 star 50%
4 star 0%
3 star 50%
2 star 0%
1 star 0%
Frank J DeCaro Sep 14, 2019
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Good beginner book good examples
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Toth Andras Feb 12, 2018
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon 5
Great book for ESP8266 beginners and pro's too ! The Security chapter and ESP8266 MQTT broker sections are really surprizing!
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Angel Aug 29, 2019
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
It is a book that helps quickly to start in the programming of ESP8266 chps, in order to DIY IoT devices with WiFi connection. The downside of the Kindle edition (I do not know for paperback), when reading directly on the computer, is that many pages are badly formatted. The opening and closing curly brackets are not aligned and the code is not indented to the right. Sometimes the code is formatted in very narrow columns, so that each sentence is broken into 3 or more lines, which makes it very difficult to follow.I have some screenshots, to prove it.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
Amazon Customer Feb 11, 2020
Full star icon Full star icon Full star icon Empty star icon Empty star icon 3
I don't often write reviews on books, but you probably need a heads up. I'm only at chapter 2 and the previous labs are out of date. It references APIs on a wunderground that are completely different and would take a lot of effort to reverse engineer them. The Thingspeak lab is also obsolete as that API is using https and not http which means change in the how the wifi library is used. I managed to get that one working with a bit of googling. I think its a good reference but don't expect all the labs to work. Like I said I'm only at chapter 2 and half the labs no longer work. The author has not bothered to create an amendment on the packtpub website to update the labs, only a minor typo correction.
Amazon Verified review Amazon
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