Showing posts with label Alexa. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alexa. Show all posts

Thursday, November 9, 2017

Getting temperature from ESP8266 over MQTT with Amazon Alexa

With the help of the Iotcentral.eu platform now I can get room temperature or outside temperature with just an ESP8266 and a temperature sensor like DHT22 or DS18B20 or BMP280.

The Alexa is questioning the iotcentral.eu server that will ask my local broker that will publish a message the the ESP8266 to ask the temperature for my room. The values for temperature and humidity will travel the other way around to Alexa, that is so nice and is letting me know about them.

On Iotcentral.eu you will find also a demoapp ( source code on git) for a plug, but you can convert it easy to other IoT device. Also there is a mobile application in Google Play named Homy4( source is on git) that connects to the iotcentral.eu and allows you to turn on/off the plug device from demoapp.

Let me know what you think and what modules do you want to integrate on iotcentral.eu, on Alexa, ESP8266  and on the mobile application.




Everything is done encrypted and authenticated against 2 servers, so the entire communication is secured.

I will publish soon this skill to Amazon so any of you can have it. Just use the demoapp from iotentral.eu and adapt it to send temperature. Maybe will be a good option to create also a demoapp for the temperature, not only for a plug.

The final box is small and compact. I've choose the DS18B20 since it can be integrated well in the box I have. To bad that there are not some enclosures for wemos D1 or nodeMcu which are most popular boards on the market. A printed 3D one it is an option, but takes time and I don't know if they can be produced in a large number.

Final box with eNVi - Alexa thermometer

So now the eNVi-T is up and running in 3 rooms. Next will be an air quality module and maybe an thermostat.

Total cost:10 euro.


Monday, September 18, 2017

Control any TV with your voice

Few months ago I was writing about the Broadlink RM3 mini in this article.

The big news is that nows supports the  Amazon "Alexa" voice control.

So saying "Alexa, change to channel 77 on Television" will change your TV to channel 77.

You can also rename your favorite channel to a specific name and call it like this: "Alexa, change to channel Sport on Television" and the Broadcom RM3 mini will do that for you.

To have all this features you need to install this application from Google Play ( I don't know for iPhone) and make sure  you have the latest version of firmware on your Broadlink RM3 mini.



If you have an STB Like I have and you are using your TV just as a panel you need to assign the virtual remote buttons to your STB remote buttons. After that everything will work fine.

The last step is to add the "BroadLink Remote Control" skill to your Alexa app and do start a device discovery.


BroadLink RM3 mini
What I miss from the previous e-Control application is the possibility to share the configuration of devices with other phones.


And a video ( sorry for accent :-) ) for demo.