iotempower is targeted to run on a variety of (mainly Linux-based) hardware and on wireless microcontrollers (initially mainly esp8266-based microcontrollers and single-board Linux computers like the Raspberry Pi 3 or Raspberry Pi Zero W).
If you are interested in shopping for related hardware, check http://iot.ulno.net/hardware or go directly to AliExpress, Amazon, AdaFruit or Sparkfun and search for Wemos D1 Mini, ESP8266, NodeMCU, 37-in-1 Arduino sensor kit.
The gateway services have been tested to run on:
- Raspberry Pi 1 (B and B+), 2, 3, 4 and Zero W - however, the Raspberry Pi 4 is our first and currently mainly supported choice
- Laptops running Ubuntu Linux > 18.04, Arch Linux, Termux
We are trying to provide virtualbox images and docker configurations as soon as we find time and/or volunteers.
We are also working on verifying that IoTempower works well on Orange-Pi Zero to allow more cost-effective solutions to use iotempower.
Currently the following esp8266-based devices are supported:
- esp8266 (generic available)
- Wemos D1 Mini, pinout: https://escapequotes.net/esp8266-wemos-d1-mini-pins-and-diagram/
- NodeMCU, pinout: https://www.reddit.com/r/esp8266/comments/9q3314/nodemcu_v1_v2_v3_size_and_pinout_comparison/
- ESP-M1
- Espresso Lite V2
- Sonoff and Sonoff Touch
- esp32 (generic available)
- wroom-02
- esp32minikit (mh-et live), pinout: http://esp32.net/images/MH-ET-LIVE/ESP32-MiniKit/MH-ET-LIVE_ESP32-MiniKit.jpg
The part of IoTempower running on the esp8266 or esp32 is a standalone C++-based firmware managed by PlatformIO. However, IoTempower abstracts a lot of the burden of repetitive device management away from the user so that attaching a device to a node usually boils down to just writing one line of code, which you can adapt from plenty of examples.
Earlier versions were based on micropython, however, porting some of the C++-based Arduino device driver libraries, managing remote access, updates, dealing with very little memory, and a slightly defunct community, made management very hard leading us to the decision to switch to an admittedly harder to program environment, however, we earned the access to the huge and active Arduino community making problem solving and extensions much easier. We do not regret the switch.
There was some initial effort in creating a starter development kit for the Wemos D1 Mini - you can see more information here. However, we are now more focusing on using cheap hardware from various 37 in 1 sensor kits, which can still easily be plugged together.
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