IOT BASED HOME AUTOMATIONSYSTEM

A PROJECT REPORT
Submitted by

V.DEVENDRAN 822319105003
A.MURUGESHWARAN 822319105005
N.NAVEENKUMAR 822319105006
P.MAHESHWARAN 822319105304

In partial fulfilment for the Award of the degree

of

BACHELOR OF ENGINEERING
IN

ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

VANDAYAR ENGINEERING COLLEGE

ANNA UNIVERSITY: CHENNAI - 600 025

MAY 2023
 ANNA UNIVERSITY: CHENNAI - 600 025
BONAFIDE CERTIFICATE
Certify that this project report “IOT BASED HOME
AUTOMATIONSYSTEM”is the bonafidework
V.DEVENDRAN 822319105003
A.MURUGESHWARAN 822319105005
N.NAVEENKUMAR 822319105006
P.MAHESHWARAN 822319105304

who carried out the project work under my supervision

SIGNATURE SIGNATURE

MR.I.MOHAMEDSIDDIK, M.E MR. I.MOHAMEDSIDDIK,M.E.,

HEAD OF THE DEPARTMENT SUPERVISOR
Dept of EEE Assistant Professor /Dept of EEE
Vandayar Engineering College Vandayar Engineering College
Pulavarnatham Pulavarnatham

Submitted to the project viva-voce examination held on ……………………

Internal Examiner External Examiner

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

This project has been under taken and completed with direct
and indirect help of many people and I would like to acknowledge the same.

I extend my sincere thanks to our honourable chairman

Thiru S.GunasekaranVandayar M.COM., Vandayar group of
institutions,for offering me to attaining my most cherished goal.
I extend my deepest gratitude to Thiru G.Vijayaprakash M.TECH
secretary and correspondent, vandayar group of institutions for giving
permission to do the project work successfully. I also wish to thank our
Principal Dr.S.Samundeeswari M.E., Ph.D. for her encouragement to do
the project.
I am grateful to express my profound thanks to
Mr.I.MOHAMEDSIDDIK M.E., Head of the Department, Electrical and
Electronics Engineering who has been a source of encouragement and moral
strength.
It gives immense pleasure to extend my sincere and heartfelt thanks to
internal project guide and my project coordinator
Mr.I.MOHAMEDSIDDIK M.E.,Assistant Professor, Electrical and
Electronics Engineering, Vandayar group of institutions, for their untiring
valuable and timely suggestions in indispensable situation. I also extend my
sincere thanks to my Staff members of EEE Department.
I am extremely thankful to my parents for enlightening me by
providing professional education and for their prayerful support that makes
me to complete the project phase successfully.

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 CONTENT
Topic Page No.
List of figures i
List of Tables ii
Abbreviations and Acronyms iii
Abstract 1

Chapter 1 (Introduction)
1.1 Introduction 3
1.2 Background 3
1.3 Project objective 3
1.4 Scope 4
1.5 Project management 4
1.6 Overview and Benefits 5
1.7 Organisation of thesis 6

Chapter 2 (Literature Review) 11

Chapter 3 (Theory)
3.1 IOT Internet of Things 13

3.1.1 Features of IOT 13

3.1.2 Advantages of IOT 14

3.1.3 Disadvantages of IOT 16
3.1.4 Application grounds of IOT 17
3.1.5 IOT technologies and protocols 18
3.1.6 IOT software 20

3.2 Node MCU 21

3.2.1 Pin Configuration of Node MCU Development Board 21
3.2.2 Parts of Node MCU development board 24

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 3.2.3 Installation of Node MCU 28

3.3 Block diagram 29

3.3.1 Block diagram of proposed system 29
3.3.2 Proposed system 30

3.4 Overview of the project 31

3.5 Circuit diagram 32

Chapter 4 (Hardware modelling and setup)

4.1 Main features of prototype 34

4.2 Project Layout 34

4.3 Component required 35
4.4 Setting up the system 36
4.4.1 Downloading and installing and Blynk application on smartphone 36
4.4.2 Driver installation for hardware interfacing 37

4.4.3 Interfacing Node MCU with Arduino IDE 37

4.4.4 Uploading code to Node MCU 39
4.4.5 Installation and setup of IFTTT 40
4.5 Hardware assembly 43

Chapter 5 (Logic and Operation)

5.1 Flow chart 45
5.2 Principle and operation 46
5.2.1 Advantage of Node MCU 46
5.2.2 Disadvantage of Node MCU 46

5.3 Blynk application 46

5.4 Wireless communication network 47
5.5 Voice mode control 50
5.6 Cost estimation 51

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Chapter 6 (Conclusion and Future Scope)
6.1 Result 53
6.2 Limitation 53

6.3 further enhancement and future scope 53

6.4 Conclusion 53

Chapter 7 (References) 54

Appendix A (Hardware Description) 56

Appendix B (Data Sheets) 62

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 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure No. Figure Page No.

1. Model of phases in project management 5
2. Working of IOT enables care devices 17
3. IOT controlled greenhouse environment 18
4. Node MCU Development Board 21
5. ESP8266 Node MCU pinout 24
6. ESP 12E module in Node MCU Development board 25
7. Power module on a Node MCU development board 25
8. GPIO pins on Node MCU development board 26
9. ON board switches and LED indicators on Node MCU 27
development board
10. CP2120 on Node MCU development board 27
11. Block diagram of proposed system 29
12. Creating an account and generating unique ID in Blynk Server 31
13. Setup to control Node MCU from Blynk application 31
14. Connection diagram of Node MCU controlling 4 channel relay 32
module
15. Layout of project module 34
16. Setup Blynk application 36
17. Arduino IDE preferences 37
18. ESP8266 board installation in Arduino IDE 38
19. Arduino IDE Board manager installation 38
20. Assigning communication port on Arduino IDE 39
21. Code in Arduino IDE to be installed to Node MCU 40
22. IFTTT configured with actions and commands 41
23. Configuration of applet to switch relay with voice commands 42
24. Node MCU & 4 channel relay connection 43
25. Flow chart of prototype function 45
26. Working principle of Blynk application 47
27. Voice and switch mode control 50
28. Node MCU module 57
29. Resistor 57
30. Colour code of resistor 58
31. 6V cube relay 59
32. Channel 5V Relay Module 59
33. Schematic of relay module 60
34. Blank glass epoxy PCB board 61

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 LIST OF TABLES

Table No Table Page No

1. Node MCU index ↔ GPIO mapping 22
2. Component listing 35
3. Comparison chart of Wi-Fi with other wireless 48
communication protocols 49
4. Costing of Project 51

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 ABBREVIATION AND ACRONYMS

SL. NO ACRONYM EXPANSION

1. IOT Internet of Things
2. RF Comm Radio Frequency Communication
3. NodeMCU Node Micro Controller Unit
4. Wi-Fi Wireless Fidelity
5. SSL Secure Socket Layer
6. GPIO General Purpose Input/Output
7. NFC Near Field Communication
8. LAN Local Area Network
9. LoRaWAN Low Power Wide Area Network
10. DIP Dual In-line Package
11. UBW Ultra-Wide Band
12. PIR Passive Infrared Sensor
13. UID Unique Identifier
14. HAS Home Automation System
15. TCP Transmission Control Protocol
16. SSH Secure Socket Shell
17. IIOT Industrial Internet of Things
18. GSM Global System for Mobile
19. BLE Bluetooth Low Energy
20. SoC System on a Chip
21. USB Universal Serial Bus
22. LDR Light Dependent Resistor
23. HMI Human Machine Interaction
24. MQTT Message Queue Telemetry Transport
25. WSN Wireless Sensor Network
26. NLP Natural Language Processing
27. PCB Printed Circuit Board

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 ABSTRACT

This project presents the overall design of Home Automation System (HAS) with low cost
and wireless system. It specifically focuses on the development of an IOT based home automation
system that is able to control various components via internet or be automatically programmed to
operate from ambient conditions. In this project, we design the development of a firmware for smart
control which can successfully be automated minimizing human interaction to preserve the integrity
within whole electrical devices in the home. We used Node MCU, a popular open source IOT platform,
to execute the process of automation. Different components of the system will use different
transmission mode that will be implemented to communicate the control of the devices by the user
through Node MCU to the actual appliance. The main control system implements wireless technology
to provide remote access from smart phone. We are using a cloud server-based communication that
would add to the practicality of the project by enabling unrestricted access of the appliances to the
user irrespective of the distance factor. We provided a data transmission network to create a stronger
automation. The system intended to control electrical appliances and devices in house with relatively
low cost design, user-friendly interface and ease of installation. The status of the appliance would be
available, along with the control on an android platform. This system is designed to assist and provide
support in order to 1fulfil the needs of elderly and disabled in home. Also, the smart home concept
in the system improves the standard living at home.

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CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION

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1.1 INTRODUCTION

Internet of Things (IOT) is a concept where each device is assign to an IP address and through that
IP address anyone makes that device identifiable on internet. The mechanical and digital
machines are provided with unique identifiers (UIDs) and the ability to transfer data over a
network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction. Basically, it
started as the “Internet of Computers.” Research studies have forecast an explosive growth in
the number of “things” or devices that will be connected to the Internet. The resulting network
is called the “Internet of Things” (IoT). The recent developments in technology which permit the
use of wireless controlling environments like, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi that have enabled different
devices to have capabilities of connecting with each other. Using a WIFI shield to act as a Micro
web server for the Arduino which eliminates the need for wired connections between the Arduino
board and computer which reduces cost and enables it to work as a standalone device. The Wi-Fi
shield needs connection to the internet from a wireless router or wireless hotspot and this would
act as the gateway for the Arduino to communicate with the internet. With this in mind, an
internet based home automation system for remote control and observing the status of home
appliances is designed.
Due to the advancement of wireless technology, there are several different type of connections
are introduced such as GSM, WIFI, and BT. Each of the connection has their own unique
specifications and applications. Among the four popular wireless connections that often
implemented in HAS project, WIFI is being chosen with its suitable capability. The capabilities of
WIFI are more than enough to be implemented in the design. Also, most of the current
laptop/notebook or Smartphone come with built-in WIFI adapter. It will indirectly reduce the cost
of this system.

1.2 BACKGROUND

The concept of “Home Automation” has been in existence for several years. “Smart Home”,
“Intelligent Home” are terms that followed and is been used to introduce the concept of
networking appliance within the house. Home Automation Systems (HASs) includes centralized
control and distance status monitoring of lighting, security system, and other appliances and
systems within a house. HASs enables energy efficiency, improves the security systems, and
certainly the comfort and ease of users. In the present emerging market, HASs is gaining
popularity and has attracted the interests of many users. HASs comes with its own challenges.
Mainly being, in the present day, end users especially elderly and disabled, even though hugely
benefited, aren’t seen to accept the system due to the complexity and cost factors.

1.3 PROJECT OBJECTIVES

Design of an independent HAS

To formulate the design of an interconnected network of home appliance to be integrated into
the HAS. The objective to account for every appliance and its control to be automated and
integrated into the network further formulated into the HAS.

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 Wireless control of home appliances (Switch and Voice mode)
To develop the application that would include features of switch and/or voice modes to control
the applications.

Monitoring status of appliances

Being able to view the status of home appliances on the application, in order have a better HAS.

Secure connection channels between application and Node MCU

Use of secure protocols over Wi-Fi so that other devices are prevented to achieve control over
the HAS. Secure connections are obtained by SSL over TCP, SSH.

Controlled by any device capable of Wi-Fi (Android, iOS, PC)

To achieve flexibility in control of the home appliances, and device capable of Wi-Fi connectivity
will be able to obtain a secure control on the HAS.

Extensible platform for future enhancement

With a strong existing possibility of adding and integrating more features and appliances to the
system, the designed system needs to be highly extensible in nature.

1.4 SCOPE
The aim is to design a prototype that establishes wireless remote control over a network of home
appliances. The application is designed to run on android device providing features like, switch
mode control, voice command control and a provision to view the status of the devices on the
application itself. Considering its wide range of application, following are the scope of this
prototype.
The system can be implemented in homes, small offices and malls as well, being in-charge of
control of the electrical appliances.
For remote access of appliances in internet or intranet. The appliances in the above mentioned
environment can be controlled in intra-network or can be accessed via internet.
The development of technology friendly environment. The system incorporates the use of
technology and making HAS. By the use of day to day gadgets we can utilize them for a different
perspective.

1.5 PROJECT MANAGEMENT

Management of any project can be briefly disintegrated into several phases. Our project has been
decomposed into the following phases:

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 • Information Gathering
ENVISIONED PHASE • Project Initiation

• Hardware & software estimation

PLANNING PHASE • Scheduling and distribution of task

• Analysis of project
MODELLING PHASE • Design and architechture of project

CONSTRUCTION • Coding and hardware assembly

PHASE • Testing and Debugging

DEPLYOMENT • Delivery of project

PHASE • Feedback

Figure 1. Model of phases in project management.

Experimentation
This phase involved discussions regarding necessary equipment regarding the project. The study of
related already existing projects, gathering required theoretical learning. It also included figuring out
the coding part, by developing simple algorithms and flowcharts to design the whole process
Design
This phase was, designing layout of the application, and the necessary features to be included. This
involved the complete hardware assembly and installing the code to Node MCU. The power strip was
designed to connect the home appliances that can be controlled via GPIO pins.
Development and testing
This phase had the development of the application. The android device was connected to the Node
MCU via wireless network (WiFi) and the whole prototype was tested for identification and removal
of bugs.
Real world testing
The prototype was ready to be tested into the real world and integrated with various real time
electrical appliances.

1.6 OVERVIEW AND BENEFITS

The benefits of an established wireless remote switching system of home appliances include:

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 No legal issues
Obtaining access to or traversing properties with hard lines is extremely difficult.

Reduced wiring issues

Considering the increase in price of copper, thus increases the possibility of the wire to be stolen.
The use of a wireless remote system to control home appliances means no wire for thieves to
steal.

Extended range
As the system establishes control over Wi-Fi, it was a generally considered descent range. That is
150 feet indoors. Outdoors it can be extended to 300 feet, but since the application is of a HAS,
an indoor range is considered.

Security
As the connection of the control of the HAS is established over a secure network the system
ensures security to the maximum extent.

Integrable and extensive nature

The prototype designed can be integrated to a larger scale. Also it has an extensive nature being
able to add or remove the appliances under control according to application.

1.7 ORGANIZATION OF THESIS

The thesis is organised into seven chapters including the introduction. Each chapter is unique on
its own and is described with necessary theory to comprehend it.

Chapter 2 deals with Literature Review, this chapter reflects a comprehended form of the existing
projects related to the topic. It credits the projects along with a brief paragraph of summery about
the project. This reflects the various people worked on this area, how different and advanced
each project is from one another.

Chapter 3 has the Theory that has been acquired to commence the project work. This discussed
about IOT, the advantages, disadvantages the network topologies and communication protocols.
This chapter also briefs about the main microcontroller unit of the prototype, Node MCU. Its pin
configuration, various functional units of the development board and the installation process of
the device. The chapter further giver a brief overview of the project, a block diagram of the system
and the circuit diagram.

Chapter 4 describes the Hardware Modelling and setup of the project. The chapter points the
main features of the prototype, gives a layout of the project, lists the components requires. It
briefly describes the various setup processes involved with the project, including hardware

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interfacing and software installation and setup according to our requirement. It finally gives the
hardware assembly involved.

Chapter 5 is the Logic and operation of the project. A flow chart presents the actions describe the
working process of the prototype. It discussed the principle of operation of the system with the
advantages and disadvantages of the microcontroller unit. It describes Blynk and IFTTT
application and the wireless network established to attain remote control over the system. It
describes the process of voice control mode and gives an overall cost estimation of the project.

Chapter 6 is the conclusion and Future scope. This chapter includes the result of the project work
carried, the limitations it possesses, the further enhancements and modification that can be
integrated into the prototype and finally concludes the project work carried so far.

Chapter 7 lists the References that have been used for the commencement of the project work.

Appendix A & B individual hardware description of the prototype and associated data sheets.

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 CHAPTER 2
LIERATURE REVIEW

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“Smart Energy Efficient Home Automation System using IOT”, by Satyendra K. Vishwakarma,
Prashant Upadhyaya, Babita Kumari, Arun Kumar Mishra.
This paper presents a step-by-step procedure of a smart home automation controller. It uses IOT to
convert home appliances to smart and intelligent devices, with the help of design control. An energy
efficient system is designed that accesses the smart home remotely using IOT connectivity. The
proposed system mainly requires, Node MCU as the microcontroller unit, IFTTT to interpret voice
commands, Adafruit a library that supports MQTT acts as an MQTT broker and Arduino IDE to code
the microcontroller. This multimodal system uses Google Assistant along with a web based
application to control the smart home. The smart home is implemented with main controller unit
that is connected with the 24-hour available Wi-Fi network. To ensure, that the Wi-Fi connection do
not turn off, the main controller is programmed to establish automatic connection with the available
network and connected to the auto power backup.

“IOT Based Smart Security and Home Automation”, by Shardha Somani, Parikshit Solunke, Shaunak
Oke, Parth Medhi, Prof. P. P. Laturkar.
This paper focuses on a system that provides features of Home Automation relying on IOT to operate
easily, in addition to that it includes a camera module and provides home security. The android
application basically converts Smartphone into a remote for all home appliances. Security is achieved
with motion sensors if movement is sensed at the entrance of the house; a notification is sent that
contains a photo of house entrance in real time. This notification will be received by the owner of the
house via internet such that app can trigger a notification. So owner can raise an alarm in case of any
intrusion or he/she can toggle the appliances like opening the door if the person is a guest. The
system uses Raspberry Pi, a small sized computer which acts as server for the system. The smart
home consist two modules. Home automation that consists; fan light and door controller, and
security module that consists; smoke sensor motion sensor and camera module.

“A Dynamic Distributed Energy Management Algorithm of Home Sensor Network for Home
Automation System”, by Tui-Yi Yang, Chu-Sing Yang, Tien-Wen Sung.
This paper proposes an optimization of home power consumption based on PLC (Power Line
Communication) for an easy to access home energy consumption. This also proposes a Zigbee and
PLC based renewable energy gateway to monitor the energy generation of renewable energies. ACS
and DDEM algorithm are proposed for the design of an intelligent distribution of power management
system to make sure ongoing power supply of home networks. To provide efficient power
management the power supply models of home sensor network are classified groups viz. main supply
only, main supply and backup battery, rechargeable battery power and non-rechargeable battery
power. Devices with particular features are assigned to these groups. It targets to establish real time
processing scheme to address variable sensor network topologies.

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“Enhance Smart Home Automation System based on Internet of Things”, by Tushar Churasia and
Prashant Kumar Jain.
This paper proposes a system that develops a model to reduce the computation overhead in existing
smart home solutions that uses various encryption technologies like AES, ECHD, hybrid, etc. these
solutions use intermediate gateway for connecting various sensor devices. The proposed model
provides a method for automation with sensor based learning. The system uses temperature sensor
for development but other sensors can also be used as per requirement. These smart home devices
with sensors can configure themselves autonomously and can operate without human intervention.
This work minimizes encryption decryption and focuses on authentication and automation of smart
home devices with learning. The system bypasses local gateway mentioned in existing system to
provide better security for smart home devices and sensor data and save computation overhead. The
real time broker cloud is directly connected with smart home and manages all incoming and outgoing
request between users and devices. The main purpose to use real time broker cloud is save time of
cryptographic operations.

“Visual Machine Intelligence for Home Automation”, by Suraj, Ish Kool, Dharmendra Kumar,
Shovan Barman.
The paper present a vision-based machine intelligence system to sense on/off state of common home
appliance. The proposed method of sensing the state of appliances results on a novel home
automation system. The accessibility of the suite of devices in the home over a remote network is
facilitated by the IP Addressing methods in the IOT. This project uses two boards viz. Raspberry Pi
and Intel Galileo Gen 2. The communication between the User devices, Raspberry Pi and the Intel
Galileo boards happens over a wireless network. The UDP protocol is deployed to facilitate the
wireless communication of the nodes present in the home automation network. A Pi Cam and a USB
Logitech camera attached to the rotating shaft of two different servo motor capture snapshots that
are passed as inputs to the Machine Learning based models trained using dlib-C++ to detect the state
of the operation of the appliances. The proposed method uses visual modality to automate the
appliances, as privacy concerns may emerge while using the images from some specific places, as a
counter to this issue, an SPDT switch is added to the Raspberry Pi which when turned off ensures that
even if the images are taken from the webcams, they are just passed as inputs to the machine
learning models and are not displayed on the website when the users access the website on the
server address obtained from Raspberry Pi.

“A Low Cost Home Automation System Using Wi-Fi based Wireless Sensor Network Incorporating
internet of Things”, by Vikram.N, Harish.K.S, Nihaal.M.S, Raksha Umesh, Shetty Aashik Ashok
Kumar.
This paper illustrates a methodology to provide a low cost Home Automation System (HAS) using
Wireless Fidelity (Wi-Fi).This crystallizes the concept of internetworking of smart devices. A Wi-Fi
based Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is designed for the purpose of monitoring and controlling
environmental, safety and electrical parameters of a smart interconnected home. The different

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sections of the HAS are; temperature and humidity sensor, gas leakage warning system, fire alarm
system, burglar alarm system, rain sensing, switching and regulation of load & voltage and current
sensing. The primary requirement of HAS to monitor and control of devices is accomplished using a
Smartphone application. The application is developed using Android Studio based on JAVA platform
and User Interface of those are exemplified. The primary focus of the paper is to develop a solution
cost effective flexible in control of devices and implementing a wide range of sensors to to capture
various parameters.

“Voice Controlled Home Automation System using Natural Language Processing and Internet of
Things”, by Mrs. Paul Jasmin Rani, Jason Bakthakumar, Praveen Kumaar.B, Praveen Kumaar.U,
Santhosh Kumar.
The paper focuses on the construction of a fully functional voice based Home automation system
that uses Internet of Things, Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing (NLP) to provide
a cost-effective, efficient way to work together with home appliances using various technologies such
as GSM, NFC, etc. it implements a seamless integration of all the appliances to a central console, i.e.
the mobile device. The prototype uses Arduino MK1000, known as Genuino MK1000. The NLP in this
project gives the user the freedom to interact with the home appliances with his/her own voice and
normal language rather than complicated computer commands. The appliances are connected to the
mobile device through an Arduino Board that establishes the concept of Internet of Things. The
Arduino Boards are interfaced with the appliances and programmed in such a way that they respond
to mobile inputs.

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CHAPTER 3
THEORY

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3.1 IOT (INTERNET OF THINGS)

IOT as a term has evolved long way as a result of convergence of multiple technologies, machine
learning, embedded systems and commodity sensors. IOT is a system of interconnected devices
assigned a UIDS, enabling data transfer and control of devices over a network. It reduced the
necessity of actual interaction in order to control a device. IOT is an advanced automation and
analytics system which exploits networking, sensing, big data, and artificial intelligence technology
to deliver complete systems for a product or service. These systems allow greater transparency,
control, and performance when applied to any industry or system.

3.1.1 Features of IOT

3.1.1.1 Intelligence

IOT comes with the combination of algorithms and computation, software & hardware that makes
it smart. Ambient intelligence in IOT enhances its capabilities which facilitate the things to respond
in an intelligent way to a particular situation and supports them in carrying out specific tasks. In
spite of all the popularity of smart technologies, intelligence in IOT is only concerned as a means of
interaction between devices, while user and device interaction are achieved by standard input
methods and graphical user interface

3.1.1.2 Connectivity

Connectivity empowers the Internet of Things by bringing together everyday objects. Connectivity
of these objects is pivotal because simple object level interactions contribute towards collective
intelligence in the IOT network. It enables network accessibility and compatibility in the things.
With this connectivity, new market opportunities for the Internet of things can be created by the
networking of smart things and applications

3.1.1.3 Dynamic Nature

The primary activity of Internet of Things is to collect data from its environment, this is achieved
with the dynamic changes that take place around the devices. The state of these devices change
dynamically, example sleeping and waking up, connected and/or disconnected as well as the
context of devices including temperature, location and speed. In addition to the state of the device,
the number of devices also changes dynamically with a person, place and time

3.1.1.4 Enormous Scale

The number of devices that need to be managed and that communicate with each other will be
much larger than the devices connected to the current Internet. The management of data
generated from these devices and their interpretation for application purposes becomes more
critical. Gartner (2015) confirms the enormous scale of IOT in the estimated report where it stated
that 5.5 million new things will get connected every day and 6.4 billion connected things will be in

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use worldwide in 2016, which is up by 30 percent from 2015. The report also forecasts that the
number of connected devices will reach 20.8 billion by 2020

3.1.1.5 Sensing

IOT wouldn’t be possible without sensors that will detect or measure any changes in the
environment to generate data that can report on their status or even interact with the
environment. Sensing technologies provide the means to create capabilities that reflect a true
awareness of the physical world and the people in it. The sensing information is simply the analog
input from the physical world, but it can provide a rich understanding of our complex world

3.1.1.6 Heterogeneity

Heterogeneity in Internet of Things as one of the key characteristics. Devices in IOT are based on
different hardware platforms and networks and can interact with other devices or service platforms
through different networks. IOT architecture should support direct network connectivity between
heterogeneous networks. The key design requirements for heterogeneous things and their
environments in IOT are scalabilities, modularity, extensibility and interoperability.

3.1.1.7 Security

IOT devices are naturally vulnerable to security threats. As we gain efficiencies, novel experiences,
and other benefits from the IOT, it would be a mistake to forget about security concerns associated
with it. There is a high level of transparency and privacy issues with IOT. It is important to secure
the endpoints, the networks, and the data that is transferred across all of it means creating a
security paradigm.

3.1.2 Advantages of IOT

3.1.2.1 Communication

IOT encourages the communication between devices, also famously known as Machine-to-Machine
(M2M) communication. Because of this, the physical devices are able to stay connected and hence
the total transparency is available with lesser inefficiencies and greater quality.

3.1.2.2 Automation and Control

Due to physical objects getting connected and controlled digitally and centrally with wireless
infrastructure, there is a large amount of automation and control in the workings. Without human
intervention, the machines are able to communicate with each other leading to faster and timely
output.

3.1.2.3 Information

It is obvious that having more information helps making better decisions. Whether it is mundane
decisions as needing to know what to buy at the grocery store or if your company has enough
widgets and supplies, knowledge is power and more knowledge is better.
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3.1.2.4 Monitor

The second most obvious advantage of IOT is monitoring. Knowing the exact quantity of supplies or
the air quality in your home, can further provide more information that could not have previously
been collected easily. For instance, knowing that you are low on milk or printer ink could save you
another trip to the store in the near future. Furthermore, monitoring the expiration of products can
and will improve safety.

3.1.2.5 Time

As hinted in the previous examples, the amount of time saved because of IOT could be quite large.
And in today’s modern life, we all could use more time.

3.1.2.6 Money

The biggest advantage of IOT is saving money. If the price of the tagging and monitoring equipment
is less than the amount of money saved, then the Internet of Things will be very widely adopted.
IOT fundamentally proves to be very helpful to people in their daily routines by making the
appliances communicate to each other in an effective manner thereby saving and conserving
energy and cost. Allowing the data to be communicated and shared between devices and then
translating it into our required way, it makes our systems efficient.

3.1.2.7 Automation of daily tasks leads to better monitoring of devices

The IOT allows you to automate and control the tasks that are done on a daily basis, avoiding
human intervention. Machine-to-machine communication helps to maintain transparency in the
processes. It also leads to uniformity in the tasks. It can also maintain the quality of service. We can
also take necessary action in case of emergencies.

3.1.2.8 Efficient and Saves Time

The machine-to-machine interaction provides better efficiency, hence; accurate results can be
obtained fast. This results in saving valuable time. Instead of repeating the same tasks every day, it
enables people to do other creative jobs.

3.1.2.9 Saves Money

Optimum utilization of energy and resources can be achieved by adopting this technology and
keeping the devices under surveillance. We can be alerted in case of possible bottlenecks,
breakdowns, and damages to the system. Hence, we can save money by using this technology.

3.1.2.10 Better Quality of Life

All the applications of this technology culminate in increased comfort, convenience, and better
management, thereby improving the quality of life.

15
3.1.3 Disadvantages of IOT

3.1.3.1 Compatibility

Currently, there is no international standard of compatibility for the tagging and monitoring
equipment. I believe this disadvantage is the most easy to overcome. The manufacturing companies
of these equipment just need to agree to a standard, such as Bluetooth, USB, etc. This is nothing
new or innovative needed.

3.1.3.2 Complexity

As with all complex systems, there are more opportunities of failure. With the Internet of Things,
failures could sky rocket. For instance, let’s say that both you and your spouse each get a message
saying that your milk has expired, and both of you stop at a store on your way home, and you both
purchase milk. As a result, you and your spouse have purchased twice the amount that you both
need. Or maybe a bug in the software ends up automatically ordering a new ink cartridge for your
printer each and every hour for a few days, or at least after each power failure, when you only need
a single replacement.

3.1.3.3 Privacy/Security

With all of this IOT data being transmitted, the risk of losing privacy increases. For instance, how
well encrypted will the data be kept and transmitted with? Do you want your neighbours or
employers to know what medications that you are taking or your financial situation?

3.1.3.4 Safety

Imagine if a notorious hacker changes your prescription. Or if a store automatically ships you an
equivalent product that you are allergic to, or a flavour that you do not like, or a product that is
already expired. As a result, safety is ultimately in the hands of the consumer to verify any and all
automation.

As all the household appliances, industrial machinery, public sector services like water supply and
transport, and many other devices all are connected to the Internet, a lot of information is available
on it. This information is prone to attack by hackers. It would be very disastrous if private and
confidential information is accessed by unauthorized intruders.

3.1.3.5 Lesser Employment of Menial Staff

The unskilled workers and helpers may end up losing their jobs in the effect of automation of daily
activities. This can lead to unemployment issues in the society. This is a problem with the advent of
any technology and can be overcome with education. With daily activities getting automated,
naturally, there will be fewer requirements of human resources, primarily, workers and less
educated staff. This may create Unemployment issue in the society.

3.1.3.6 Technology Takes Control of Life

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Our lives will be increasingly controlled by technology, and will be dependent on it. The younger
generation is already addicted to technology for every little thing. We have to decide how much of
our daily lives are we willing to mechanize and be controlled by technology.

3.1.4 Application Grounds of IOT

3.1.4.1 Wearables
Wearable technologies is a hallmark of IOT applications and is one of the earliest industries to have
deployed IOT at its services. Fit Bits, heart rate monitors, smartwatches, glucose monitoring devices
reflect the successful applications of IOT.
3.1.4.2 Smart homes
This area of application concerned to this particular project, so a detailed application is discussed
further. Jarvis, an AI home automation employed by Mark Zuckerberg, is a remarkable example in
this field of application.
3.1.4.3 Health care
IOT applications have turned reactive medical based system into proactive wellness based system.
IOT focuses on creating systems rather than equipment. IOT creates a future of medicine and
healthcare which exploits a highly integrated network of sophisticated medical devices. The
integration of all elements provides more accuracy, more attention to detail, faster reactions to
events, and constant improvement while reducing the typical overhead of medical research and
organizations

Figure 2. Working of IOT enables care devices.

3.1.4.4 Agriculture
A greenhouse farming technique enhances the yield of crops by controlling environmental
parameters. However, manual handling results in production loss, energy loss, and labour cost,
making the process less effective. A greenhouse with embedded devices not only makes it easier to
be monitored but also, enables us to control the climate inside it. Sensors measure different

17
parameters according to the plant requirement and send it to the cloud. It, then, processes the data
and applies a control action.

Figure 3. IOT controlled greenhouse environment.

3.1.4.5 Industrial Automation
For a higher return of investment this field requires both fast developments and quality of
products. This vitality thus coined the term IIOT. This whole schematic is re-engineered by IOT
applications. Following are the domains of IOT applications in industrial automation

• Factory Digitalization
• Product flow Monitoring
• Inventory Management
• Safety and Security
• Quality Control
• Packaging optimization
• Logistics and Supply Chain Optimization

3.1.4.6 Government and Safety

IOT applied to government and safety allows improved law enforcement, defence, city planning,
and economic management. The technology fills in the current gaps, corrects many current flaws,
and expands the reach of these efforts. For example, IOT can help city planners have a clearer view
of the impact of their design, and governments have a better idea of the local economy.

3.1.5 IOT Technologies and Protocols

Several communication protocols and technologies cater to and meet the specific functional
requirements of IOT system.

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3.1.5.1 Bluetooth
Bluetooth is a short range IOT communication protocol/technology that is profound in many
consumer product markets and computing. It is expected to be key for wearable products in
particular, again connecting to the IOT albeit probably via a smartphone in many cases. The new
Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) – or Bluetooth Smart, as it is now branded – is a significant protocol for
IOT applications. Importantly, while it offers a similar range to Bluetooth it has been designed to
offer significantly reduced power consumption.
3.1.5.2 Zigbee
ZigBee is similar to Bluetooth and is majorly used in industrial settings. It has some significant
advantages in complex systems offering low-power operation, high security, robustness and high
and is well positioned to take advantage of wireless control and sensor networks in IOT
applications. The latest version of ZigBee is the recently launched 3.0, which is essentially the
unification of the various ZigBee wireless standards into a single standard.

3.1.5.3 Z-Wave
Z-Wave is a low-power RF communications IOT technology that primarily design for home
automation for products such as lamp controllers and sensors among many other devices. A Z-
Wave uses a simpler protocol than some others, which can enable faster and simpler development,
but the only maker of chips is Sigma Designs compared to multiple sources for other wireless
technologies such as ZigBee and others.
3.1.5.4 Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi connectivity is one of the most popular IOT communication protocol, often an obvious choice
for many developers, especially given the availability of Wi-Fi within the home environment within
LANs. There is a wide existing infrastructure as well as offering fast data transfer and the ability to
handle high quantities of data. Currently, the most common Wi-Fi standard used in homes and
many businesses is 802.11n, which offers range of hundreds of megabit per second, which is fine
for file transfers but may be too power-consuming for many IOT applications.

3.1.5.5 Cellular
Any IOT application that requires operation over longer distances can take advantage of
GSM/3G/4G cellular communication capabilities. While cellular is clearly capable of sending high
quantities of data, especially for 4G, the cost and also power consumption will be too high for many
applications. But it can be ideal for sensor-based low-bandwidth-data projects that will send very
low amounts of data over the Internet.

3.1.5.6 NFC
NFC (Near Field Communication) is an IOT technology. It enables simple and safe communications
between electronic devices, and specifically for smartphones, allowing consumers to perform
transactions in which one does not have to be physically present. It helps the user to access digital
content and connect electronic devices. Essentially it extends the capability of contactless card
technology and enables devices to share information at a distance that is less than 4cm.

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3.1.5.7 LoRaWAN
LoRaWAN is one of popular IOT Technology, targets wide-area network (WAN) applications. The
LoRaWAN design to provide low-power WANs with features specifically needed to support low-cost
mobile secure communication in IOT, smart city, and industrial applications. Specifically meets
requirements for low-power consumption and supports large networks with millions and millions of
devices, data rates range from 0.3 kbps to 50 kbps.

3.1.6 IOT software

IOT software addresses its key areas of networking and action through platforms, embedded
systems, partner systems, and middleware. These individual and master applications are
responsible for data collection, device integration, real-time analytics, and application and process
extension within the IOT network. They exploit integration with critical business systems (e.g.,
ordering systems, robotics, scheduling, and more) in the execution of related tasks.
3.1.6.1 Data Collection
This software manages sensing, measurements, light data filtering, light data security, and
aggregation of data. It uses certain protocols to aid sensors in connecting with real-time, machine-
to-machine networks. Then it collects data from multiple devices and distributes it in accordance
with settings. It also works in reverse by distributing data over devices. The system eventually
transmits all collected data to a central server.
3.1.6.2 Device Integration
Software supporting integration binds (dependent relationships) all system devices to create the
body of the IOT system. It ensures the necessary cooperation and stable networking between
devices. These applications are the defining software technology of the IOT network because
without them, it is not an IOT system. They manage the various applications, protocols, and
limitations of each device to allow communication.

3.1.6.3 Real-Time Analytics

These applications take data or input from various devices and convert it into feasible actions or
clear patterns for human analysis. They analyse information based on various settings and designs
in order to perform automation-related tasks or provide the data required by industry.
3.1.6.4 Application and Process Extension
These applications extend the reach of existing systems and software to allow a wider, more
effective system. They integrate predefined devices for specific purposes such as allowing certain
mobile devices or engineering instruments access. It supports improved productivity and more
accurate data collection.

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3.2 NODE MCU

NodeMCU (Node Microcontroller Unit) is a low-cost open source IOT platform. It initially
included firmware which runs on the ESP8266 Wi-Fi SoC from Espressif Systems, and hardware
which was based on the ESP-12 module. Later, support for the ESP32 32-bit MCU was added.

Figure 4. Node MCU Development Board.

NodeMCU is an open source firmware for which open source prototyping board designs are
available. The name “NodeMCU” combines “node” and “MCU” (micro-controller unit). The term
“NodeMCU” strictly speaking refers to the firmware rather than the associated development kits.
Both the firmware and prototyping board designs are open source.
The firmware uses the Lua scripting language. The firmware is based on the eLua project, and built
on the Espressif Non-OS SDK for ESP8266. It uses many open source projects, such as lua-
cjson and SPIFFS. Due to resource constraints, users need to select the modules relevant for their
project and build a firmware tailored to their needs. Support for the 32-bit ESP32 has also been
implemented.
The prototyping hardware typically used is a circuit board functioning as a dual in-line package (DIP)
which integrates a USB controller with a smaller surface-mounted board containing the MCU and
antenna. The choice of the DIP format allows for easy prototyping on breadboards. The design was
initially was based on the ESP-12 module of the ESP8266, which is a Wi-Fi SoC integrated with
a Tensilica Xtensa LX106 core, widely used in IOT applications.

3.2.1 Pin Configuration of Node MCU Development Board

This module provides an access to the GPIO subsystem. All the access is based on I/O index number
of Node MCU kits, not the internal GPIO pins. For example, the D0 pin on the development kit is
mapped to GPIO pin 16. Node MCU provides access to the GPIO pins and the following pin mapping
table is a part of the API documentation.

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 ESP8266 INTERNAL
PIN NAME ON NODE ESP8266 INTERNAL PIN NAME ON NODE
GPIO PIN NUMBER
MCU DEVELOPMENT GPIO PIN NUMBER MCU DEVELOPMENT
KIT KIT

0 [*] GPIO16 7 GPIO13

1 GPIO5 8 GPIO15

2 GPIO4 9 GPIO3

3 GPIO0 10 GPIO1

4 GPIO2 11 GPIO9

5 GPIO14 12 GPIO10

6 GPIO12

Table 1. Node MCU index ↔ GPIO mapping.

[*] D0 (GPIO16) can only be used for GPIO read/write. It does not support open-
drain/interrupt/PWM/I²C or 1-Wire.

The ESP8266 Node MCU has total 30 pins that interface it to the outside world. The pins are grouped
by their functionality as:

Power pins: There are four power pins viz. one VIN pin & three 3.3V pins. The VIN pin can be used to
directly supply the ESP8266 and its peripherals, if you have a regulated 5V voltage source. The 3.3V
pins are the output of an on-board voltage regulator. These pins can be used to supply power to
external components.

GND: is a ground pin of ESP8266 Node MCU development board.

12 IC Pins: are used to hook up all sorts of I2C sensors and peripherals in your project. Both I2C Master
and I2C Slave are supported. I2C interface functionality can be realized programmatically, and the
clock frequency is 100 kHz at a maximum. It should be noted that I2C clock frequency should be
higher than the slowest clock frequency of the slave device.

GPIO Pins: ESP8266 Node MCU has 17 GPIO pins which can be assigned to various functions such as
I2C, I2S, UART, PWM, IR Remote Control, LED Light and Button programmatically. Each digital enabled
GPIO can be configured to internal pull-up or pull-down, or set to high impedance. When configured
as an input, it can also be set to edge-trigger or level-trigger to generate CPU interrupts.

22
ADC Channel: The Node MCU is embedded with a 10-bit precision SAR ADC. The two functions can
be implemented using ADC viz. Testing power supply voltage of VDD3P3 pin and testing input voltage
of TOUT pin. However, they cannot be implemented at the same time.

UART Pins: ESP8266 Node MCU has 2 UART interfaces, i.e. UART0 and UART1, which provide
asynchronous communication (RS232 and RS485), and can communicate at up to 4.5 Mbps. UART0
(TXD0, RXD0, RST0 & CTS0 pins) can be used for communication. It supports fluid control. However,
UART1 (TXD1 pin) features only data transmit signal so, it is usually used for printing log.

SPI Pins: ESP8266 features two SPIs (SPI and HSPI) in slave and master modes. These SPIs also
support the following general-purpose SPI features:

• 4 timing modes of the SPI format transfer

• Up to 80 MHz and the divided clocks of 80 MHz
• Up to 64-Byte FIFO

SDIO Pins: ESP8266 features Secure Digital Input/output Interface (SDIO) which is used to directly
interface SD cards. 4-bit 25 MHz SDIO v1.1 and 4-bit 50 MHz SDIO v2.0 are supported.

PWM Pins: The board has 4 channels of Pulse Width Modulation (PWM). The PWM output can be
implemented programmatically and used for driving digital motors and LEDs. PWM frequency range
is adjustable from 1000 μs to 10000 μs, i.e., between 100 Hz and 1 kHz.

Control Pins: are used to control ESP8266. These pins include Chip Enable pin (EN), Reset pin (RST)
and WAKE pin.

• EN pin – The ESP8266 chip is enabled when EN pin is pulled HIGH. When pulled LOW
the chip works at minimum power.
• RST pin – RST pin is used to reset the ESP8266 chip.
• WAKE pin – Wake pin is used to wake the chip from deep-sleep.

23
 Figure 5. ESP8266 Node MCU pinout.

3.2.2 Parts of Node MCU Development Board

3.2.2.1 ESP 12-E Module

The development board equips the ESP-12E module containing ESP8266 chip having Tensilica
Xtensa® 32-bit LX106 RISC microprocessor which operates at 80 to 160 MHz adjustable clock
frequency and supports RTOS.

There’s also 128 KB RAM and 4MB of Flash memory (for program and data storage) just enough to
cope with the large strings that make up web pages, JSON/XML data, and everything we throw at IOT
devices nowadays.

The ESP8266 Integrates 802.11b/g/n HT40 Wi-Fi transceiver, so it can not only connect to a Wi-Fi
network and interact with the Internet, but it can also set up a network of its own, allowing other
devices to connect directly to it. This makes the ESP8266 Node MCU even more versatile.

24
 • Tensilica Xtensa® 32-bit LX106
• 80 to 160 MHz clock frequency
• 128 kb internal RAM
• 4 MB external flash
• 802.11b/g/n HT40 Wi-Fi transceiver

Figure 6. ESP 12E module in Node MCU Development board.

3.2.2.2 Power Requirements

As the operating voltage range of ESP8266 is 3V to 3.6V, the board comes with a LDO voltage
regulator to keep the voltage steady at 3.3V. It can reliably supply up to 600mA, which should be
more than enough when ESP8266 pulls as much as 80mA during RF transmissions. The output of the
regulator is also broken out to one of the sides of the board and labelled as 3V3. This pin can be used
to supply power to external components.
Power to the ESP8266 Node MCU is supplied via the on-board Micro B USB connector. Alternatively,
if you have a regulated 5V voltage source, the VIN pin can be used to directly supply the ESP8266 and
its peripherals.

• Operating voltage 2.5V to 3.6V

• On-board 3.6V 600mA regulator
• 80 mA operating current
• 20 µA during sleep mode

Figure 7. Power module on a Node MCU development board.

25
3.2.2.3 Peripheral I/O

The ESP8266 Node MCU has total 17 GPIO pins broken out to the pin headers on both sides of the
development board. These pins can be assigned to all sorts of peripheral duties, including:

• ADC channel – A 10-bit ADC channel.

• UART interface – UART interface is used to load code serially.
• PWM outputs – PWM pins for dimming LEDs or controlling motors.
• SPI, I2C & I2S interface – SPI and I2C interface to hook up all sorts of sensors and
peripherals.
• I2S interface – I2S interface if you want to add sound to your project.

As a result of the pin multiplexing feature (Multiple peripherals multiplexed on a single GPIO pin), a
single GPIO pin can act as PWM/UART/SPI.

Figure 8. GPIO pins on Node MCU development board.

3.2.2.4 On Board Switches and LED Indicators

The ESP8266 Node MCU features two buttons. One marked as RST located on the top left corner is
the Reset button, used of course to reset the ESP8266 chip. The other FLASH button on the bottom
left corner is the download button used while upgrading firmware. The board also has a LED
indicator which is user programmable and is connected to the D0 pin of the board.

26
 Switches and indicators

• RST: Reset the ESP8266 chip

• FLASH: Download new programs
• Blue LED: User programmable

Figure 9. ON board switches and LED indicators on Node MCU development board.

3.2.2.5 Serial Communication

The board includes CP2102 USB-to-UART Bridge Controller from Silicon Labs, which converts USB
signal to serial and allows your computer to program and communicate with the ESP8266 chip.

• CP2120 USB-to-UART converter

• 4.5 Mbps communication speed
• Flow control support

Figure 10. CP2120 on Node MCU development board.

27
3.2.3 Installation of Node MCU

Mostly these days devices download and install drivers on their own, automatically. Windows doesn’t
know how to talk to the USB driver on the Node MCU so it can’t figure out that the board is a Node
MCU and proceed normally. Node MCU Amica is an ESP8266 Wi-Fi module based development
board. It has got Micro USB slot that can directly be connected to the computer or other USB host
devices. Ti has got 15X2 header pins and a Micro USB slot, the headers can be mounted on a
breadboard and Micro USB slot is to establish connection to USB host device. It has CP2120 USB to
serial converter. In order to install CP2120 (USB to serial converter), user is needed to download the
driver for the same. Once user downloads drivers as per its respective operating system, the system
establishes connection to Node MCU. The user needs to node down the COM post allotted to newly
connected USB device (Node MCU) from device manager of the system. This com port number will
be required while using Node MCU Amica. As the CP2120 driver is been installed, the Node MCU can
be programmed using Arduino IDE software by coding in embedded C. this requires ESP8266 board
installation in Arduino IDE from board manager, and assigning communication port.

28
3.3 BLOCK DIAGRAM
3.3.1 Block diagram of the proposed system

Figure 11. Block diagram of proposed system.

The block diagram gives the functionality of the overall project. The Node MCU unit is the
microcontroller or the main controlling unit of the system. The user uses the mobile application in
setting commands for functioning of the appliances. The mobile application interprets the command
form in user in voice or switch mode and sends signal to the Node MCU unit, over a wireless network
established by Wi-Fi communication. Hence the Wi-Fi module (actually inbuilt into Node MCU), helps
the microcontroller establish Wi-Fi communication with a device and take commands from an
application over wireless network. The Node MCU on further receiving the signal then turns on/off
the appliance with the help of relay. The Node MCU, relay and the final appliances are physically
connected. There is a power supply unit that powers the microcontroller, the relay as well as the final
appliances. There is also a display unit that displays the status of the application.

29
3.3.2 Proposed system

The android OS provides the flexibility of using the open source. The inbuilt sensors can be accessed
easily. The application used to control the system has the following features. Android Phone acts as
a client and data are sent via sockets programming. The application takes command from user in two
different modes.

• Switch mode: Switch mode uses the radio buttons that are used to control the home
appliances. The radio button sends the status of the switch.
• Voice mode: Voice Mode is used to control the home appliances using voice command. Using
the inbuilt microphone of Smartphone, the application creates an intent that fetches the
speech data to the Google server which responds with a string data. The string data are
further analysed and then processed.

More detailed discussion about the modes of control and how they actually control the system is
discussed if coming chapters.

30
3.4 OVERVIEW OF PROJECT
The following describes the process of creating an account in Blynk application and generating
unique ID against a particular device. This ID acts as an identifier for the particular device on the
Blynk server.

Download the Blynk application from playstore on the

smartphone with which appliances are to be controlled.

Create an account in the Blynk using your own email ID.

A unique ID is generated by the application under a new

project for a particular device.

This is is added to the program before installing it into

the controlling device.

With this unique ID the devices are identified in the

Blynk server for it's working

Figure 12. Creating an account and generating unique ID in Blynk Server.

Once the unique Id is generated the next step would be to include this key into the coding written in
embedded C to establish communication between Node MCU and Blynk Server. The following
describes this process.

Node MCU is connected through WiFi

The SSID (network name) and password of the Wi-Fi

network is added into the code.

Open the Blynk application and create a new project.

Add the unique ID created by the application in the code

and install it to Node MCU.

Insert switches in the Blynk application and corrospond

then to particular GPIO pins as in the code and the
hardware connection.

Figure 13. Setup to control Node MCU from Blynk application

31
3.5 CIRCUIT DIAGRAM

Figure 14. Connection diagram of Node MCU controlling 4 channel relay module.

32
 CHAPTER 4
HARWARE MODELLING
AND SETUP

33
4.1 MAIN FEATURES OF THE PROTOTYPE
The features of the developed prototype are:

• The prototype establishes a wireless remote switching system of home appliances.

• The prototype uses Wi-Fi to establish wireless control, which gives an indoor range to about
150 feet.
• The command to switch on and off an appliance can be given from radio buttons on the
application from one’s smartphone.
• There is also a provision developed to use voice commands on smartphone to remotely
switch home appliances
• Any device capable of Wi-Fi connectivity can be used to control the prototype.
• The control over home appliances is obtained over secure connections, by SSL over TCP, SSH.
• Simple design easy to integrate into a verity of appliances and extend on further range.
• Displays the status of each appliances on the application in smartphone
• Cost effective.

4.2 PROJECT LAYOUT

Project
module

Hardware Software
module module

Node 4 channel 9V LED and Blynk Google IFTTT

MCU relay battery Resistors application assistant application
module

Figure 15. Layout of project module

34
Node MCU is the microcontroller unit in the prototype. It has an in built Wi-Fi module (ESP8266) that
establishes wireless remote switching of home appliances.

Four channel relay module consists 4 individual relays physically connected between Node MCU and
the home appliances. It takes signals form GPIO pins of Node MCU and accordingly connects or
disconnects home appliances from the supply. They act as the switching device.

LED and resistors are used in this prototype to replace real appliances. They indicate power being
turned on and off to the appliances. In real time operation they would be replaced by actual home
appliances.

Blynk application was designed for the Internet of Things. It can control hardware remotely, it can
display sensor data, it can store data, visualize it, etc. the prototype primarily uses Blynk application
to sense commands from user to the hardware over wireless network.

Google assistant is a system software present on the android phone. It interprets the voice
commands by the user to turn on or off an appliances.

IFTTT application the voice commands interpreted by the google assistant isn’t understandable by
Blynk application thus unable to send to the hardware. IFTTT is an intermediate application that
interprets commands from Google assistant and sends on and off signal to Blynk application Via Blynk
server.

4.3 COMPONENTS REQIRED

Component Quantity
SL. NO
Node MCU 1
1.
4 channel relay board 1
2.
9V battery 1
3.
LED 4
4.
2.2K Ω Resistor 4
5.
Blank PCB (KS100) 1
6.
Male pin header 1
7.
Female pin header 1
8.
Jumper wires 8
9.
USB Cable 1
10.

Table 2. Component listing.

35
4.4 SETTING UP THE SYSTEM

4.4.1 Downloading and installing and Blynk application on smartphone

• Blynk application is downloaded and installed from the Play Store.

• Once the application is installed, a new account is created and logged in to it.
• After logging in, a new project is created. The project is named, hardware is selected as Node
MCU and the connection type is selected as Wi-Fi, and created.
• At this point Blynk will sends an authentication token to email id. This authentication token
will be used to identify the hardware in the Blynk server.
• As the prototype uses 4 channel relay module, 4 buttons are added to the screen from the
side bar.
• All the 4 buttons are then customised by adding a name and selecting the digital pin it will
correspond to. This section will actually affect the hardware connection as the relays will be
physically connected to the digital pins corresponded here.
• The setup of Blynk application is now complete.

Figure 16. Set up Blynk application

36
4.4.2 Driver installation for hardware interfacing

Mostly these days devices download and install drivers on their own, automatically. Windows doesn’t
know how to talk to the USB driver on the Node MCU so it can’t figure out that the board is a Node
MCU and proceed normally.

• Node MCU Amica is an ESP8266 Wi-Fi module based development board. It has got Micro
USB slot that can directly be connected to the computer or other USB host devices. Ti has got
15X2 header pins and a Micro USB slot, the headers can be mounted on a breadboard and
Micro USB slot is to establish connection to USB host device. It has CP2120 USB to serial
converter.
• In order to install CP2120 (USB to serial converter), user is needed to download the driver for
the same.
• Once user downloads drivers as per its respective operating system, the system establishes
connection to Node MCU.
• The user needs to node down the COM post allotted to newly connected USB device (Node
MCU) from device manager of the system. This com port number will be required while using
Node MCU Amica.

4.4.3 Interfacing Node MCU with Arduino IDE

To begin with the latest Arduino IDE version, we’ll need to update the board manager with a custom
URL. Open up Arduino IDE and go to File > Preferences. Then, copy below URL into the Additional
Board Manager URLs text box situated on the bottom of the window:
http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json

Figure 17. Arduino IDE preferences.

37
OK. Then navigate to the Board Manager by going to Tools > Boards > Boards Manager. There should
be a couple new entries in addition to the standard Arduino boards. Filter your search by
typing esp8266. Click on that entry and select Install.

Figure 18. ESP8266 board installation in Arduino IDE.

Before we get to uploading sketch & playing with LED, we need to make sure that the board is
selected properly in Arduino IDE. Open Arduino IDE and select Node MCU 0.9 (ESP-12 Module) option
under your Arduino IDE > Tools > Board menu.

Figure 19. Arduino IDE board manager installation.

38
Now, plug your ESP8266 NodeMCU into your computer via micro-B USB cable. Once the board is
plugged in, it should be assigned a unique COM port. On Windows machines, this will be something
like COM#, and on Mac/Linux computers it will come in the form of /dev/tty.usbserial-XXXXXX.
Select this serial port under the Arduino IDE > Tools > Port menu. Also select the Upload Speed:
115200

Figure 20. Assigning communication port on Arduino IDE.

4.4.4 Uploading code to Node MCU

• NodeMCU is connected to PC using a USB cable.

• Now, we’ll set up the Arduino IDE by changing some settings. So, open up the Arduino IDE.
Select Tools > Board and select ‘NodeMCU 1.0 (ESP-12E Module)’ as the board. And that’s all
the settings we need to change. So now we begin writing the code.

• Select Files > Examples > Blynk > Boards_WIFI > ESP8266_Standalone. A new file with some
prewritten code opens. The following changes to the code are made.

1. The line which says ‘char auth[] = “YourAuthToken”, replace YourAuthToken part with
your Blynk’s authentication token that was generated by the Blynk server.

39
 2. The line which says char ssid[] = “YourNetworkName”, replace YourNetworkName part
with the name of Wi-Fi network that the Node MCU must connect to.

3. The line where it says char pass[] = “YourPassword” and replace the YourPassword part
with the password of the Wi-Fi network.

Figure 21. Code in Arduino IDE to be installed to Node MCU.

• The code is ready to be uploaded to the hardware. On clicking upload button, the code is
uploaded to Node MCU and the next time it’s powered on, it automatically connects to the
assigned Wi-Fi network.

4.4.5 Installation and setup of IFTTT

• To configure IFTTT we visit their website https://ifttt.com and sign up using google account.

• After signing in, we select My Applets from header, and select New. Search for Google
assistant and connect. Allow IFTTT for permission to use Google account to add voice
commands to it.

40
• Configure the application to work as desired, and Create Trigger.

Figure 22. IFTTT configured with actions and commands.

• Select webhooks that will allow to send commands to Blynk server. Add
http://188.166.206.43/ YourAuthTokenHere / update / DigitalPinToBeUpdateHere to the URL
field.

YourAuthTokenHere is replaced by the authentication token generated by Blynk server.

DigitalPinToBoUpdatedHere is replaced by the digital pin of Arduino that corresponds to the
Node MCU rather than the one of Node MCU itself.

Following details are added to program the applet. Here ‘0’ means to turn on, so we are
basically saying Blynk to turn on relay that is connected to pin D3, which in our case is relay
one.

Click on Create Action and finish.

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 Figure 23. Configuration of applet to switch relay with voice commands.

• Similarly, another applet is created to turn off the relay, repeating all the steps above except
the following changes: instead of writing “Turn on relay one”, written “Turn off relay one”and
instead of [“0”], written [“1”]. Two triggers are created to turn on and off one Relay.

• Similarly, we create triggers for remaining 3 relays by change the phrase and Digital pin for
each Relay. All the other steps will remain the same.

In the end for 4 relays, we have 8 triggers to turn each of them on or off. After all this is done, voice
commands to Google Assistant can switch relay.

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4.5 HARDWARE ASSEBLY

Hardware assembly mainly includes connecting specific digital pins of NodeMCU to the 4
relays on the relay module, including the connection of supply and ground pins. The main
functional assemble in this prototype is simple. The further 4 relays are fit to be connected to
any appliance desired to be controlled.
The vital part in hardware assembly is taking into account the digital pin that corresponds to
which relay. This connection is done as per the setup of Blynk application. The radio buttons
on Blynk application are set up to switch a particular digital pin in Node MCU. It is made sure
that the relay connection are physically made according to this set up. For example, we have
assigned the radio button on Blynk application corresponding to relay 1 to work with D3. Then
physical connection of relay 1 is made with D3 of Node MCU.

Figure 24. Node MCU & 4 channel relay connection.

In this prototype instead of real home appliances, we connect the relays to LEDs, (according to
circuit diagram) to just ensure the functionality of the prototype. The prototype is given a supply
from a 9V battery.

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 CHAPTER 5
LOGIC AND OPERATION

44
5.1 FLOW CHART

Figure 25. Flow chart of prototype function.

This flow chart shows the working of the project. The process starts be initializing the Wi-Fi, the
network name and password are written in the code and uploaded to Node MCU. The android device
is connected to Node MCU over Wi-Fi. The Blynk server is set up and connection is made, the devices
is identified in the Blynk server using the generated authentication token. The command for
controlling the load is given to the application, and this command, over Wi-Fi network is sent to the
Node MCU.

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5.2 PRINCIPLE AND OPERATION
Node MCU is an open source IOT platform. It includes firmware which runs on the ESP8266 Wi-Fi SoC
from Espressif Systems, and hardware which is based on the ESP-12 module. The term “Node MCU”
by default refers to the firmware rather than the development kits. The firmware uses the Lua
scripting language. It is based on the eLua project, and built on the Espressif Non-OS SDK for ESP8266.
It uses many open source projects, such as lua-cjson, and spiffs.

5.2.1 Advantages of Node MCU

• Low cost, the Node MCU is less costly compared to any other IOT based device.
• Node MCU has Arduino Like hardware I/O. It is becoming very popular in these days that
Arduino IDE has extended their software to work in the field of ESP 8266 Field module version.
• Node MCU has easily configurable network API.
• Integrated support for Wi-Fi network: ESP 8266 is incorporated in Node MCU, which is an
easily accessible Wi-Fi module.
• Reduced size of board.
• Low power consumption.

5.2.2 Disadvantages of Node MCU

• The operation of the circuit depends on the working internet connection. If the working
internet connection is not available then it will not run.
• Node MCU also depends on the free server provided by the third party, if the free server is
not working then it will not run.
• Node MCU has less resources of official documentation

• Need to learn a new language and IDE

• Reduced pinout
• Scarce documentation

5.3 BLYNK APPLICATION

The Blynk application was designed for the primary purpose of Internet of Things. Blynk is a
platform with IOS and Android apps to control Arduino, Raspberry Pi and the likes over the
Internet. It’s a digital dashboard where graphic interface for a prototype can be built by simply
dragging and dropping widgets. It can control hardware remotely, it can display sensor data, can

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store and visualize data and possessed a lot more functionality. There are three major components
in the platform:

• Blynk Application: allows to you create amazing interfaces for your projects using various
widgets we provide.
• Blynk Server: responsible for all the communications between the smartphone and
hardware. You can use our Blynk Cloud or run your private Blynk server locally. It’s an open-
source, could easily handle thousands of devices and can even be launched on a Raspberry
Pi.
• Blynk Libraries: for all the popular hardware platforms – enable communication with the
server and process all the incoming and outgoing commands.

Every time a radio button is accessed in the Blynk application, the message travels to the Blynk
Cloud, where it finds the specific hardware by the unique generated authentication token. It works
in the same way for the opposite direction.

Figure 26. Working principle of Blynk application.

5.4 WIRELSS COMMUNICATION NETWORK

The prototype aims to wireless control over home appliances with the technology of IOT. As discussed
earlier, IOT supports various wireless communication protocols, like Bluetooth, Z-Wave, Zigbee etc.
this prototype uses Wi-Fi as wireless communication network to establish remote access over home

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appliances. This is because Wi-Fi has its own advantages over other wireless communication
protocols.

Advantages of Wi-Fi over other wireless technologies like Bluetooth and ZigBee

Bluetooth is generally used for point to point networks and Bluetooth operates at a much
slower rate of around 720 Kbps which is very small for video transfer or moving large amount of data
like the image captured from a camera, whereas the bandwidth of Wi-Fi can be up to 150Mbps and
very ideal for video transmission.

Wi-Fi is very much secure means of communication than Bluetooth.

Wi-Fi connection to send video, audio, and telemetry operation, while accepting remote control
commands from an operator who can be located virtually anywhere in the world.

Robots are already being eyed for obvious tasks like conducting search-and rescue missions during
emergencies or hauling gear for soldiers in the jungle or woods. The mechanics of the robot uses the
concept that has been developed to ensure robust navigation, search and transportation in rough
terrain.

STANDARD BLUETOOTH UBW ZIGBEE WI-FI

IEEE 802.15.1 802.15.3a 802.15.4 802.11a/g/b

specification

Frequency band 2.4 GHz 3.1-10.6 GHz 868/915 MHz; 2.4 GHz; 5 GHz
2.4 GHz

Maximum 1 Mb/s 110 Mb/s 250 Kb/s 54 Mb/s

signal rate

Nominal range 10 m 10 m 10-100 m 100 m

Nominal TX 0-10 dBm -41.3 dBm/MHz (-25) -0 dBm 10-20 dBm

power

RF channels 79 1-15 1/10; 16 14 (2.4 GHz)

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 Channel 1 MHz 500 MHz- 7.5 0.3/0.6 GHz; 2 22 MHz
bandwidth GHz MHz

Modulation GFSK BPSK, QPSK BPSK (+ASK), O- BPSK, QPSK,

type QPSK COFDM, CCK,
M-QAM

Spreading FHSS DS-UBW, MB- DSSS DSSS, CCK,

OFDM OFDM

Co-existence Adaptive Adaptive Dynamic Dynamic

mechanism frequency frequency frequency frequency
hopping hopping selection selection,
transmit power
control

Basic cell Piconet Picomet Star BSS

Extension of Scattemet Peer-to-peer Cluster tree, ESS

basic cell Mesh

Maximum cell 8 8 >65000 2007

nodes

Encryption E0 Stream AES block AES block RC4 stream

chipper cipher (CTR, cipher (CTR, cipher (WEP),
counter mode) counter mode) AES block
cipher

Authentication Shared secret CBC-MAC CBC-MAC WPA2 (802.11i)

(CCM) (extention of
CCM)

Data protection 16-bit CRC 32-bit CRC 16-bit CRC 32-bit CRC

Table 3. Comparison chart of Wi-Fi with other wireless communication protocols.

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5.5 VOICE MODE CONTROL
The prototype works in both switch mode and voice mode of control. The switch mode is
simply be accessing the radio buttons on the Blynk application, and the process of control has been
discussed earlier in this chapter in the section before. Here we will discuss the voice mode control
of the prototype. We use application IFTTT and Google assistant on smart phone to achieve control
by voice commands.IFTTT stand for ‘If This Then That’, is an interface that provides web based
service in which devices are connected to mobile application.

We cannot connect the Google Assistant to the Node MCU directly, and that is the only
reason we are using the Blynk app. Blynk app can directly connect to the Node MCU and send data
to it. So, if we can send the voice commands interpreted by Google assistant directly to the Blynk
app, the Blynk app can then forward those commands to the NodeMCU. But the problem is Google
Assistant cannot directly understand foreign commands like “turn on the fan” or “turn on relay
one” etc. on its own. So, to solve this we use another intermediate application/website called
‘IFTTT’.

Simply, to control our home appliances over the internet we are using Node MCU and to
connect Node MCU with the home appliances we use a relay board. Now to send on or off signals
to the Node MCU we use our smartphone, and we do this using the Blynk app. But we want to send
the on or off signals using voice commands. To do this we use google assistant in our smartphone
and an app called IFTTT.

So, in the end what will happen is, when we say a voice command like “ok google turn on
the light” to the Google Assistant, Google Assistant sends that this foreign command to IFTTT. IFTTT
interprets this command and sends an on or off signal to the Blynk app via the Blynk Server. Blynk
will then send this signal to the Node MCU and then to our electrical appliances.

Figure 27. Voice and switch mode control.

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5.6 COST ESTIMATION

SL. NO COMPONENTS QUANTITY PRICE

1. Node MCU 1 ₹350

2. 4 channel relay board 1 ₹120

3. 9V battery 1 ₹50

4. LED 4 ₹8

5. 2.2K Ω Resistor 4 ₹4

6. Blank PCB (KS100) 1 ₹40

7. Male pin header 1 ₹5

8. Female pin header 1 ₹5

9. Jumper wires 8 ₹40

10. USB Cable 1 ₹50

Total ₹672

Table 4. Costing of Project.

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 CHAPTER 6
CONCLUSION AND
FUTURE SCOPE

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6.1 RESULT
The experimental model was made according to the circuit diagram and the results were as expected.
The home appliances could be remotely switched over Wi-Fi network. Both the switch mode and the
voice mode control methodologies were successfully achieved. The Blynk application was also
successful in displaying the status of every application.

6.2 LIMITATIONS
Android devices having lower API version than 16 requires internet access to convert the speech data
to string data. Currently, the application is made for Android Smart Phones; other OS platform
doesn’t support our application. During voice mode, external noises (voice) may affect our result. The
speech instruction that we command in our voice mode may not give exact result as expected. There
hence lies an ambiguity in result.

6.3 FURTHER ENHANCEMENT AND FUTURE SCOPE

Looking at the current situation we can build cross platform system that can be deployed on various
platforms like iOS, Windows. Limitation to control only several devices can be removed by extending
automation of all other home appliances. The prototype can include sensors to implement automatic
control of the home appliances like; an LDR that can sense daylight and switch lamp accordingly, a
PIR to detect motion and be used for security purposes making an alarm buzz, or a DHT11 sensor
that’s senses ambient temperature and humidity of atmosphere and switch fan/air conditioner
accordingly. Scope of this project can be expanded to many areas by not restricting to only home,
but to small offices

6.4 CONCLUSION
It is evident from this project work that an individual control home automation system can be cheaply
made from low-cost locally available components and can be used to control multifarious home
appliances ranging from the security lamps, the television to the air conditioning system and even
the entire house lighting system. And better still, the components required are so small and few that
they can be packaged into a small inconspicuous container. The designed home automation system
was tested a number of times and certified to control different home appliances used in the lighting
system, air conditioning system, home entertainment system and many more . Hence, this system is
scalable and flexible.

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CHAPTER 7
REFFERENCES

54
1. “Smart Energy Efficient Home Automation System using IOT”, by Satyendra K. Vishwakarma,
Prashant Upadhyaya, Babita Kumari, Arun Kumar Mishra.

2. “IOT Based Smart Security and Home Automation”, by Shardha Somani, Parikshit Solunke,
Shaunak Oke, Parth Medhi, Prof. P. P. Laturkar.

3. “A Dynamic Distributed Energy Management Algorithm of Home Sensor Network for Home
Automation System”, by Tui-Yi Yang, Chu-Sing Yang, Tien-Wen Sung; in 2016 Third
International Conference on Computing Measurement Control and Sensor Network.

4. “Enhance Smart Home Automation System based on Internet of Things”, by Tushar Churasia
and Prashant Kumar Jain; in Proceedings of the Third International Conference on I-SMAC (IoT
in Social, Mobile, Analytics and Cloud) (I-SMAC 2019) IEEE Xplore Part Number:CFP19OSV-
ART; ISBN:978-1-7281-4365-1

5. “Visual Machine Intelligence for Home Automation”, by Suraj, Ish Kool, Dharmendra Kumar,
Shovan Barman.

6. “A Low Cost Home Automation System Using Wi-Fi based Wireless Sensor Network
Incorporating internet of Things”, by Vikram.N, Harish.K.S, Nihaal.M.S, Raksha Umesh, Shetty
Aashik Ashok Kumar; in 2017 IEEE 7th International Advance Computing Conference.

7. “Voice Controlled Home Automation System using Natural Language Processing and Internet
of Things”, by Mrs. Paul Jasmin Rani, Jason Bakthakumar, Praveen Kumaar.B, Praveen
Kumaar.U, Santhosh Kumar; in 2017 Third International Conference on Science Technology
Engineering & Management (ICONSTEM)

8. Wikipedia(2009). HomeAutomation. From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Home_automation

9. Theory of IOT from :https://internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com/definition/Internet-of-Things-IoT

10. About Node MCU from: https://lastminuteengineers.com/esp8266-nodemcu-arduino-tutorial/

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APPENDIX A
HARDWARE
DESCRIPTION

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NODE MCU
NodeMCU is an open source IoT platform. It includes firmware which runs on the ESP8266 Wi-Fi
SoC from Espressif Systems, and hardware which is based on the ESP-12 module. The term
"NodeMCU" by default refers to the firmware rather than the development kits. The firmware uses
the Lua scripting language. It is based on the eLua project, and built on the Espressif Non-OS SDK for
ESP8266. It uses many open source projects, such as luacjson and SPIFFS.

Figure 28. Node MCU module.

RESISTOR

Figure 29. Resistor.

Resistance is the opposition of a material to the current. It is measured in Ohms Ω. All conductors
represent a certain amount of resistance, since no conductor is 100% efficient. To control the
electron flow (current) in a predictable manner, we use resistors. Electronic circuits use calibrated
lumped resistance to control the flow of current. Broadly speaking, resistor can be divided into two
groups viz. fixed & adjustable (variable) resistors. In fixed resistors, the value is fixed & cannot be
varied. In variable resistors, the resistance value can be varied by an adjuster knob. It can be divided
into (a) Carbon composition (b) Wire wound (c) Special type. The most common type of resistors used
in our projects is carbon type. The resistance value is normally indicated by colour bands. Each

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resistance has four colours, one of the bands on either side will be gold or silver, this is called fourth
band and indicates the tolerance, others three band will give the value of resistance (see table). For
example, if a resistor has the following marking on it say red, violet, gold. Comparing these coloured
rings with the colour code, its value is 27000 ohms or 27 kilo ohms and its tolerance is ±5%. Resistor
comes in various sizes (Power rating).The bigger the size, the more power rating of 1/4 watts. The
four colour rings on its body tells us the value of resistor value.

Colour Code of Resistor

Figure 30. Colour code of resistor.

RELAY
A relay is an electrically operated switch. Current flowing through the coil of the relay creates a
magnetic field which attracts a lever and changes the switch contacts. The coil current can be on or
off so relays have two switch positions and they are double throw (changeover) switches.
The relay’s switch connections are usually labelled COM (POLE), NC and NO:
COM/POLE= Common, NC and NO always connect to this, it is the moving part of the switch.
NC = Normally Closed, COM/POLE is connected to this when the relay coil is not magnetized.

58
NO = Normally Open, COM/POLE is connected to this when the relay coil is MAGNETIZED and vice
versa.

Figure 31. 6V Cube relay.

4 CHANNEL 5V RELAY MODULE

Figure 32. 4 Channel 5V Relay Module.

In a 5V 4-channel relay interface board, each channel needs a 15-20mA driver current. It can
be used to control various appliances and equipment with large current. It is equipped with high-

59
current relays that work under AC250V 10A or DC30V 10A. It has a standard interface that can be
controlled directly by microcontroller.
When the signal port is at low level, the signal light will light up and the optocoupler 817c (it
transforms electrical signals by light and can isolate input and output electrical signals) will conduct,
then the transistor will conduct, the relay coil will be electrified, and the normally open contact of
the relay will be closed. When the signal port is at high level, the normally closed contact of the relay
will be closed. So you can connect and disconnect the load by controlling the level of the control
signal port.

Figure 33. Schematic of relay module.

BLANK PCB
A printed circuit board (PCB) mechanically supports and electrically connects electronic components
using conductive tracks, pads and other features etched from copper sheets laminated onto a non-
conductive substrate. PCBs can be single sided (one copper layer), double sided (two copper layers)
or multi-layer (outer and inner layers). Multi-layer PCBs allow for much higher component density.
Conductors on different layers are connected with plated-through holes called vias. Advanced PCBs
may contain components - capacitors, resistors or active devices - embedded in the substrate.

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 Figure 34. Blank glass epoxy PCB board.

FR-4 glass epoxy is the primary insulating substrate upon which the vast majority of rigid PCBs are
produced. A thin layer of copper foil is laminated to one or both sides of an FR-4 panel. Circuitry
interconnections are etched into copper layers to produce printed circuit boards. Complex circuits
are produced in multiple layers. Printed circuit boards are used in all but the simplest electronic
products. Alternatives to PCBs include wire wrap and point-to-point construction. PCBs require the
additional design effort to lay out the circuit, but manufacturing and assembly can be automated.
Manufacturing circuits with PCBs is cheaper and faster than with other wiring methods as
components are mounted and wired with one single part. Furthermore, operator wiring errors are
eliminated.

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APPENDIX B
DATASHEETS

62
 Handson Technology
User Manual V1.2

ESP8266 NodeMCU WiFi Devkit

The ESP8266 is the name of a micro controller designed by Espressif Systems. The
ESP8266 itself is a self-contained WiFi networking solution offering as a bridge from
existing micro controller to WiFi and is also capable of running self-contained applications.
This module comes with a built in USB connector and a rich assortment of pin-outs. With a
micro USB cable, you can connect NodeMCU devkit to your laptop and flash it without any
trouble, just like Arduino. It is also immediately breadboard friendly.

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Table of Contents
1. Specification .............................................................................................................................................................. 3
2. Pin Definition............................................................................................................................................................. 3
3. Using Arduino IDE ..................................................................................................................................................... 3
3.1 Install the Arduino IDE 1.6.4 or greater............................................................................................................. 4
3.2 Install the ESP8266 Board Package ................................................................................................................... 4
3.3 Setup ESP8266 Support ..................................................................................................................................... 5
3.4 Blink Test ........................................................................................................................................................... 7
3.5 Connecting via WiFi ........................................................................................................................................... 9
4. Flashing NodeMCU Firmware on the ESP8266 using Windows .............................................................................. 12
4.1 Parts Required ....................................................................................................................................................... 12
4.2 Pin Assignment ...................................................................................................................................................... 12
4.3 Wiring .................................................................................................................................................................... 13
4.4 Downloading NodeMCU Flasher for Windows ..................................................................................................... 13
4.5 Flashing your ESP8266 using Windows ................................................................................................................. 13
5. Getting Started with the ESPlorer IDE..................................................................................................................... 15
5.1 Installing ESPlorer.................................................................................................................................................. 15
5.2 Schematics ............................................................................................................................................................ 18
5.3 Writing Your Lua Script.......................................................................................................................................... 18
6. NodeMCU GPIO for Lua............................................................................................................................................... 22
7. Web Resources............................................................................................................................................................ 22

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1. Specification:
• Voltage:3.3V.
• Wi-Fi Direct (P2P), soft-AP.
• Current consumption: 10uA~170mA.
• Flash memory attachable: 16MB max (512K normal).
• Integrated TCP/IP protocol stack.
• Processor: Tensilica L106 32-bit.
• Processor speed: 80~160MHz.
• RAM: 32K + 80K.
• GPIOs: 17 (multiplexed with other functions).
• Analog to Digital: 1 input with 1024 step resolution.
• +19.5dBm output power in 802.11b mode
• 802.11 support: b/g/n.
• Maximum concurrent TCP connections: 5.

2. Pin Definition:

3. Using Arduino IDE

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The most basic way to use the ESP8266 module is to use serial commands, as the chip is basically a WiFi/Serial
transceiver. However, this is not convenient. What we recommend is using the very cool Arduino ESP8266 project,
which is a modified version of the Arduino IDE that you need to install on your computer. This makes it very
convenient to use the ESP8266 chip as we will be using the well-known Arduino IDE. Following the below step to
install ESP8266 library to work in Arduino IDE environment.

3.1 Install the Arduino IDE 1.6.4 or greater

Download Arduino IDE from Arduino.cc (1.6.4 or greater) - don't use 1.6.2 or lower version! You can use your
existing IDE if you have already installed it.

You can also try downloading the ready-to-go package from the ESP8266-Arduino project, if the proxy is giving you
problems.

3.2 Install the ESP8266 Board Package

Enter http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json into Additional Board Manager URLs
field in the Arduino v1.6.4+ preferences.

Click ‘File’ -> ‘Preferences’ to access this panel.

Next, use the Board manager to install the ESP8266 package.

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 Click ‘Tools’ -> ‘Board:’ -> ‘Board Manager…’ to access this panel.

Scroll down to ‘ esp8266 by ESP8266 Community ’ and click “Install” button to install the ESP8266 library package.
Once installation completed, close and re-open Arduino IDE for ESP8266 library to take effect.

3.3 Setup ESP8266 Support

When you've restarted Arduino IDE, select ‘Generic ESP8266 Module’ from the ‘Tools’ -> ‘Board:’ dropdown menu.

Select 80 MHz as the CPU frequency (you can try 160 MHz overclock later)

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Select ‘115200’ baud upload speed is a good place to start - later on you can try higher speeds but 115200 is a good
safe place to start.

Go to your Windows ‘Device Manager’ to find out which Com Port ‘USB-Serial CH340’ is assigned to. Select the
matching COM/serial port for your CH340 USB-Serial interface.

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Find out which Com Port is assign for CH340 Select the correct Com Port as indicated on ‘Device Manager”

Note: if this is your first time using CH340 “ USB-to-Serial ” interface, please install the driver first before proceed
the above Com Port setting. The CH340 driver can be download from the below site:

https://github.com/nodemcu/nodemcu-devkit/tree/master/Drivers

3.4 Blink Test

We'll begin with the simple blink test.

Enter this into the sketch window (and save since you'll have to). Connect a LED as shown in Figure3-1.

void setup() {
pinMode(5, OUTPUT); // GPIO05, Digital Pin D1
}

void loop() {
digitalWrite(5, HIGH);
delay(900);
digitalWrite(5, LOW);
delay(500);
}

Now you'll need to put the board into bootload mode. You'll have to do this before each upload. There is no timeout
for bootload mode, so you don't have to rush!

• Hold down the ‘Flash’ button.

• While holding down ‘ Flash’, press the ‘RST’ button.
• Release ‘RST’, then release ‘Flash’

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 • When you release the ‘RST’ button, the blue indication will blink once, this means its ready to bootload.

Once the ESP board is in bootload mode, upload the sketch via the IDE, Figure 3-2.

Figure3-1: Connection diagram for the blinking test

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 Figure 3.2: Uploading the sketch to ESP8266 NodeMCU module.

The sketch will start immediately - you'll see the LED blinking. Hooray!

3.5 Connecting via WiFi

OK once you've got the LED blinking, let’s go straight to the fun part, connecting to a webserver. Create a new sketch
with this code:

Don’t forget to update:

const char* ssid = "yourssid";

const char* password = "yourpassword";

to your WiFi access point and password, then upload the same way: get into bootload mode, then upload code via
IDE.

/*
* Simple HTTP get webclient test
*/

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
const char* ssid = "handson"; // key in your own SSID
const char* password = "abc1234"; // key in your own WiFi access point
password

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 const char* host = "www.handsontec.com";

void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
delay(100);

// We start by connecting to a WiFi network

Serial.println();
Serial.println();
Serial.print("Connecting to ");
Serial.println(ssid);

WiFi.begin(ssid, password);

while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {

delay(500);
Serial.print(".");
}

Serial.println("");
Serial.println("WiFi connected");
Serial.println("IP address: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
}

int value = 0;

void loop() {
delay(5000);
++value;

Serial.print("connecting to ");
Serial.println(host);

// Use WiFiClient class to create TCP connections

WiFiClient client;
const int httpPort = 80;
if (!client.connect(host, httpPort)) {
Serial.println("connection failed");
return;
}

// We now create a URI for the request

String url = "/projects/index.html";
Serial.print("Requesting URL: ");
Serial.println(url);

// This will send the request to the server

client.print(String("GET ") + url + " HTTP/1.1\r\n" +
"Host: " + host + "\r\n" +
"Connection: close\r\n\r\n");
delay(500);

// Read all the lines of the reply from server and print them to Serial
while(client.available()){
String line = client.readStringUntil('\r');
Serial.print(line);
}

Serial.println();
Serial.println("closing connection");
}

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Open up the IDE serial console at 115200 baud to see the connection and webpage printout!

That's it, pretty easy right ! This section is just to get you started and test out your module.

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 Handson Technology
User Guide

4 Channel 5V Optical Isolated Relay Module

This is a LOW Level 5V 4-channel relay interface board, and each channel needs a 15-20mA
driver current. It can be used to control various appliances and equipment with large current.
It is equipped with high-current relays that work under AC250V 10A or DC30V 10A. It has
a standard interface that can be controlled directly by microcontroller. This module is
optically isolated from high voltage side for safety requirement and also prevent ground loop
when interface to microcontroller.

Brief Data:

• Relay Maximum output: DC 30V/10A, AC 250V/10A.

• 4 Channel Relay Module with Opto-coupler. LOW Level Trigger expansion board, which is
compatible with Arduino control board.
• Standard interface that can be controlled directly by microcontroller ( 8051, AVR, *PIC, DSP,
ARM, ARM, MSP430, TTL logic).
• Relay of high quality low noise relays SPDT. A common terminal, a normally open, one
normally closed terminal.
• Opto-Coupler isolation, for high voltage safety and prevent ground loop with microcontroller.

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Schematic:
VCC and RY-VCC are also the power supply of the relay module. When you need to drive a large power
load, you can take the jumper cap off and connect an extra power to RY-VCC to supply the relay; connect
VCC to 5V of the MCU board to supply input signals.
NOTES: If you want complete optical isolation, connect "Vcc" to Arduino +5 volts but do NOT connect
Arduino Ground. Remove the Vcc to JD-Vcc jumper. Connect a separate +5 supply to "JD-Vcc" and board
Gnd. This will supply power to the transistor drivers and relay coils.
If relay isolation is enough for your application, connect Arduino +5 and Gnd, and leave Vcc to JD-Vcc
jumper in place.

4 Channel Relay Module Schematic

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It is sometimes possible to use this relay boards with 3.3V signals, if the JD-VCC (Relay Power) is provided
from a +5V supply and the VCC to JD-VCC jumper is removed. That 5V relay supply could be totally
isolated from the 3.3V device, or have a common ground if opto-isolation is not needed. If used with
isolated 3.3V signals, VCC (To the input of the opto-isolator, next to the IN pins) should be connected to the
3.3V device's +3.3V supply.
NOTE: Some Raspberry-Pi users have found that some relays are reliable and others do not actuate
sometimes. It may be necessary to change the value of R1 from 1000 ohms to something like 220 ohms, or
supply +5V to the VCC connection.

NOTE: The digital inputs from Arduino are Active LOW: The relay actuates and LED lights when the input
pin is LOW, and turns off on HIGH.

Module Layout:

Operating Principle:
See the picture below: A is an electromagnet, B armature, C spring, D moving contact, and E fixed contacts.
There are two fixed contacts, a normally closed one and a normally open one. When the coil is not energized,
the normally open contact is the one that is off, while the normally closed one is the other that is on.

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Supply voltage to the coil and some currents will pass through the coil thus generating the electromagnetic
effect. So the armature overcomes the tension of the spring and is attracted to the core, thus closing the
moving contact of the armature and the normally open (NO) contact or you may say releasing the former
and the normally closed (NC) contact. After the coil is de-energized, the electromagnetic force disappears
and the armature moves back to the original position, releasing the moving contact and normally closed
contact. The closing and releasing of the contacts results in power on and off of the circuit.

Input:
VCC : Connected to positive supply voltage (supply power according to relay voltage)
GND : Connected to supply ground.
IN1: Signal triggering terminal 1 of relay module
IN2: Signal triggering terminal 2 of relay module
IN3: Signal triggering terminal 3 of relay module
IN4: Signal triggering terminal 4 of relay module

Output:
Each module of the relay has one NC (normally close), one NO (normally open) and one COM (Common)
terminal. So there are 4 NC, 4 NO and 4 COM of the channel relay in total. NC stands for the normal close
port contact and the state without power. NO stands for the normal open port contact and the state with
power. COM means the common port. You can choose NC port or NO port according to whether power or
not.

Testing Setup:
When a low level is supplied to signal terminal of the 4-channel relay, the LED at the output terminal will
light up. Otherwise, it will turn off. If a periodic high and low level is supplied to the signal terminal, you
can see the LED will cycle between on and off.

For Arduino：

Step 1：

Connect the signal terminal IN1、IN2, IN3 & IN4 of 4-channel relay to digital pin 4, 5, 6, 7 of the Arduino
Uno or ATMega2560 board, and connect an LED at the output terminal.
IN1> 4; IN2> 5; IN3>6; IN4>7
Step 2:

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Upload the sketch "4 Channel Relay Demo " to the Arduino Uno or ATMega2560 board. Then you can see
the LED cycle between on and off.
The actual figure is shown below:

Arduino Sketch: 4 Channel Relay Demo

/************************************************ Name：
4 channel_relay
Description: control the 4 channel relay module to ON or OFF
Website: www.handsontec.com
Email: [email protected]
*****************************************************/

//the relays connect to

int RelayControl1 = 4; // Digital Arduino Pin used to control the motor

int RelayControl2 = 5;
int RelayControl3 = 6;
int RelayControl4 = 7;

void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600);
pinMode(RelayControl1, OUTPUT);
pinMode(RelayControl2, OUTPUT);
pinMode(RelayControl3, OUTPUT);
pinMode(RelayControl4, OUTPUT);
}

void loop()
{

digitalWrite(RelayControl1,HIGH);// NO1 and COM1 Connected (LED on)

delay(1000);

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 digitalWrite(RelayControl1,LOW);// NO1 and COM1 disconnected (LED off)
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(RelayControl2,HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(RelayControl2,LOW);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(RelayControl3,HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(RelayControl3,LOW);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(RelayControl4,HIGH);
delay(1000);
digitalWrite(RelayControl4,LOW);
delay(1000);
}

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