This page contains technical information to help you get familiar with Azure IoT using the Azure IoT Starter Kit - Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 (Arduino-compatible). You will find two tutorials that will walk you through different scenarios: the first tutorial will show you how to connect your Azure IoT Starter kit to our Remote Monitoring preconfigured solution from Azure IoT Suite. In the second tutorial, you will leverage Azure IoT services to create your own IoT architecture.
This tutorial describes the process of taking your Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 kit, and using it to develop a temperature, humidity and pressure reader that can communicate with the cloud using the Microsoft Azure IoT SDK.
In this tutorial, you'll be doing the following: - Setting up your environment on Azure using the Microsoft Azure IoT Suite Remote Monitoring preconfigured solution, getting a large portion of the set-up that would be required done in one step. - Setting your device and sensors up so that it can communicate with both your computer, and Azure IoT. - Updating the device code sample to include our connection data and send it to Azure IoT to be viewed remotely.
Note: Column on the left corresponds to sensor and on the Right to board. On the image, the board is place between 10 and 30, with the RST pin connected to row 30, and sensor between 1 and 9, with the VDD pin connected to the row 1.
At the end of your work, your Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 should be connected with a working sensor.
Note: For first time users, click here to get your Azure free trial which gives you $200 of credit to get started.
Make sure your device displays in the devices section. The device status is Pending until the device establishes a connection to the remote monitoring solution.
In this step, we will be using the Arduino IDE. If you have not downloaded the IDE, please download it from the Arduino website.
You will need to install the Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 board extension for the Arduino IDE. In our steps below, we will be following the same instructions as in this link, which you can also use for troubleshooting. After going through the following steps, you should have a working sample with a blinking light on your board.
Set the COM port by clicking on Tools -> Port -> COMx. If you see multiple COM ports, then you will have to experiment, in order to find the one that corresponds to your device. One way to do that is to disconnect your device, check the list of COM ports, reconnect the device and then find which port was not there before.
If you run into any connection issues, unplug the board, hold the reset button, and while still holding it, plug the board back in. This will flash to board to try again.
To install these libraries, click on the Sketch -> Include Library -> Manage Libraries.
Search for each of these libraries using the box in the upper-right to filter your search, click on the found library, and click the "Install" button.
If you have any problems while installing the libraries, you can find more instructions here.
Unzip the example code, go to the remote_monitoring directory and double-click the file remote_monitoring.ino to open the project in the Arduino IDE.
Replace the placeholders with your WiFi name (SSID) and the WiFi password.
If you cannot find this data, then you can go to your Remote Monitoring Solution in Azure IoT Suite, click on Devices and then select your device. Check the device properties section at the right part of the page for the DEVICEID, HOSTNAME and Authentication Keys (bottom right of the page). Click on "View Authentication keys" and copy "KEY 1" as your deviceKey.
If your code is correct and all libraries was properly installed, you will receive something like the following message in the IDE.
Sketch uses 376,409 bytes (36%) of program storage space. Maximum is 1,044,464 bytes.
local variables. Maximum is 81,920 bytes.
While the code is being downloaded, there should be a blue blinking LED on your Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266.
After the deployment is done and you see 100% in the output console, then go to Tools -> Serial Monitor in the Arduino IDE to watch the live data being sent. After 15 seconds you should see a measurements update.
Warning: The Remote Monitoring solution provisions a set of Azure IoT Services in your Azure account. It is meant to reflect a real enterprise architecture and thus its Azure consumption is quite heavy.
To avoid unnecessary Azure consumption, you can delete, stop or downsize your Azure IoT Suite. We recommend you delete the preconfigured solution in azureiotsuite.com once you are done with your work (since it is easy to recreate).
This tutorial describes the process of taking your Microsoft Azure IoT Starter Kit for the Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266, and using it to develop a temperature and humidity reader that can communicate with the cloud using the Microsoft Azure IoT SDK.
Sensor interface library from Adafruit.
Now we will create a service to store our data in the cloud. - Log on to the Microsoft Azure Portal - In the menu, click New and select Data + Storage then Storage Account - Name: Your choice (we chose huzzahstorage) - Deployment model: Classic - Performance: Standard - Replication: Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS) - Subscription: Your choice - Resource Group: Your choice - Location: Your choice - Once the account is created, find it in the resources blade or click on the pinned tile, go to Settings, Keys, and write down the primary connection string.
Enter a name for the job (We chose “HuzzahStorageJob”), a preferred region, then choose your subscription. At this stage you are also offered to create a new or to use an existing resource group. Choose the resource group you created earlier.
Follow the instructions here. There you will see how to add a URL pointing to Adafruit's repository of board extensions, how to make the Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 board selectable under the Tools menu, and how to get the Blink sketch to run.
As we explained on the item 1.5, boards with microB connector don't have the GPIO0 button. So, in the 'Blink Test', ignore the steps to put the board in the bootload mode, and go directly to the step to upload the sketch via the IDE.
The Adafruit Unified Sensor library is also needed. This can be downloaded here. Instructions for manually installing a library can be found here.
There should now be a blue blinking LED on your Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266. After the deployment is done and you see 100% in the output console, then go to Tools -> Serial Monitor in the Arduino IDE to watch the live data being sent. After 15 seconds you should see a measurements update.