Espressif is a company that has revolutionized the low-cost WiFi, BLE development. With classic ESP32 WROOM module, we have shown Controlling AC Powered Appliances With ESP32 and IBM Watson IoT with zero monthly cost. But the coding part with IBM Watson IoT was not easy. Although, we have pointed out how to use Android Apps to Control Devices Connected to IBM Watson IoT, essentially it was not easy to develop a custom Android application.
Espressif has thought to supply code, Mobile App and provide the cloud platform to easily build projects to control a light bulb, change the hue, or change the speed of a fan. This article is talking about where to find the resources.
The New ESP32 C3
Commonly we use classic ESP32 – usually ESP-WROOM-32 module on ESP32-DevKitC. ESP32-C3 is the newer thing which is single core. ESP32-C3 is less capable than our classic ESP32, so it’s cheaper than the ESP-WROOM-32 module. ESP8266 dev boards sell for $2, classic ESP32 dev boards sell for $4, and probably ESP32-C3 boards will sell for $2.5.
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The reason to mention ESP32 C3 is that you will find this one on most of the latest documents by Espressif. And if you are using Arduino IDE, you will need some re-configuration. Most of the snippets which work with ESP-WROOM-32 should work with ESP32 C3.
ESP Rainmaker Cloud
You need not know a lot since ESP Rainmaker Cloud gets “auto-configured” from the sketch.
The Official Documentation and Sketch
You can read the official announcement :
1 | https://blog.espressif.com/esp-rainmaker-now-in-arduino-cf1474526172 |
Here is the Arduino IDE sketch to get started :
1 | https://github.com/espressif/arduino-esp32/blob/master/libraries/RainMaker/examples/RMakerSwitch/RMakerSwitch.ino |
I must mention that Sonoff DUALR3 is also supported by this code. Here is the webpage to download the phone app:
1 | https://rainmaker.espressif.com/docs/quick-links.html#phone-apps |
Now you can design and develop apps using the convenient Arduino IDE and the ESP RainMaker Agent. You set the parameters you wish to control, these parameters are forwarded to the RainMaker Cloud. The phone app adjusts itself to the parameters that you defined initially. Python libraries are also available to control multiple devices through a single phone application.
