Sensor-Ways Open Source IoT Devices

In this post we will introduce the IoT devices that can work and communicate smoothly with the open source IoT backend application "Sensor-Ways".
We will start with one useful device with both Gas and Temp monitoring capabilities.

Hardware Components:
- Arduino Wemos d1 or d1 mini or similar ESP8266 which contains the embedded WiFi chip.
- Gas sensor like MQ-2
- Temperature Sensor DHT11
- Buzzer (for local alarm)
- 5V Relay modules (1-2 optional in case we need to control other electric devices upon any action from the sensor reading or from the Sensor-Ways backend)
- Connection wires.

- Adapter 9V would be good to power the Wemos d1 board, optionally you can power it using USB connection or 9V Battery.

Connectivity:

1. MQ-2 or any to 5v, GND and A0  

2. DHT sensor to 5v, GND and D6  

3. Optional Buzzer: GND and D7

4. Optional Relay 1: GND & D5 

5. Optional Relay 2: GND & D8 or D7 

Device Code:

From the GitHub code: https://github.com/osa-ora/sensor-ways-iot-devices/tree/master

You will need the 2 files in the same folder:

IoTDevice-GasTempDeviceOTA.ino and IoTDevice-Common.ino

Code Compile & Upload:

Using Arduino IDE compile the code and ensure everything is working fine. Then upload the code to a connected board using USB.

Note: You may need to install some of the libraries as needed in the import section in the code.

Device Configurations:

The default code is configured to connect 2 sensors; Gas & Temp and no relay modules are connected, you can change this easily by the 2 variables:

//Connected Sensors Count 

int connectedSensors = 2;

//Connected Relay Modules Count 

int connectedDevices = 0;

You can also update the other settings like WiFI SSID, password, Sensor-Ways backend deployment IP/URL and Port and Device Id & Password.

Note: In the previous post we have deployed our Sensor-Ways application, so you can easily get the IP address and HTTP/HTTPS port.

Also we have demonstrated the steps required to register a new IoT device where we get at the end device Id and device password, all you need to do is to follow these steps again in the backend IoT Sensor-Ways server:

1. Create a new Device Model with the same exact features supported in our IoT device (Gas and Temperature Sensors without any control device attached).
2. Add new unique bar code attached/mapped to this device model (once for each IoT device)
3. Go to Manage Devices and Add new device using this bar code (it will auto detect the associated device model)
4. Once the device is registered, you will need to use the device id and password to update your IoT device to connect to the system

Here is sample of defining Gas-Temp device model:

- The other option to configure the device during runtime by deploying the code to the IoT device and it will allow you at 1st time to configure the required values at the 1st run; device Id, password, WIFI SSID and WIFI password.

As simple as: Open the serial monitor in the Arduino IDE, send commands like: id=value, pass=value, wifi=vale, password=value, then send restart=true (1st time you will need to do a manual restart for the device after the code uploaded otherwise you will get an error)

You can write help=true to show all the possible commands.

This serial connection is very useful when you ship your IoT devices to the customers with pre-configuration to your IoT server, all you need during installation is to connect the device and configure the required customer variables such as device and WiFi identifiers.

Note: For production you will need to switch the debug messages by commenting one line in the variables section that define the debug:

#define DEBUG

To looks like:

//define DEBUG

Monitoring The Device & Device Management:

Now if we go to Sensor-Ways backend application and open Manage Devices we can see the device status and last message received from the device and last ping (last seen).

If we click on that device we can see more information in the device details page and we can also send some commands or do some sort of device management.

When you have enough messages, the graph icon will appear where you can see the pattern in your device messages.

You may try to send some commands such as request new update message from the device or restart the device, you can also edit the thresholds for alert for different sensor (per device).

You will get notifications upon any alert (values that violate the thresholds) also when the device in online or offline or sending error data, etc.. you can control all these messages from the preferences:

The platform has a lot of other features like defining workflow based on the sensor input values, or schedulers,  also building dashboards, simulators, etc.. you may need to spend reasonable time to fully understand the different features.

In subsequent posts, we will demonstrate many other IoT devices that enrich our IoT platform capabilities.