Today, I'm reaching out for your expertise on a project that I'm eager to start. I plan to create a system that allows users to control their intelligent electric plugs (smart plugs) and smart lights using an application developed by myself, which will interact with Firebase.
The idea is to use WiFi-enabled smart plugs and smart lights, connecting them to an ESP8266 board, which will in turn be connected to the WiFi network. By altering the state of these devices on Firebase, I would be able to turn them on or off remotely.
Although I have a theoretical vision of the project, I would like to benefit from your practical advice:
Which plugs and lights would be most suitable for this project?
Is choosing the ESP8266 a wise decision? Are there better or more suitable alternatives?
How can I establish communication with these plugs and lights without using Alexa or dedicated applications?
Any other advice or tutorials that could help me would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance for your help and valuable suggestions.
What devices have you checked out and which are compatible with your software. Do some searching on "Home Automation" and there are thousands of items that will show you what is already available. Why do we need yours?
Choose hardware that is well supported by the Home Assistant application.
If Home Assistant can talk to it then there is a good chance that you'll be able to make a custom application running on an ESP8266 that can do the same thing. The language that you use to develop the mobile app doesn't matter. Your Arduino code will be C++ as that is the only choice. For a non-Arduino platform there's Micro Python etc.
Thank you for your response! But my problem is that I don't know how to control sockets and lamps with the ESP32, so I'm looking for references, people who have done it so I can get inspired.
People generally don't create mobile apps to control various proprietary home automation gear.
This is for several reasons:
Firstly the manufacturer already provides a mobile app to do that job.
PC programs such as Home Assistant together with plugins can also do that job. Home Assistant also has its own a mobile app for remote control.
Manufacturers don't like the idea of open standards and interoperability so they make it difficult for people to develop software that works with their products.
For a non-general solution target Tasmota or ESPHome devices. There is lots of documentation on the web.
Finding such 'approved' devices for sale in your country may be difficult or impossible.
It sounds like you want to use commercially available "smart" devices and create your own "home controller" based on an ESP8266 with WiFi.
Note - my comments below are NOT based on WiFi enabled smart plugs/lights as requested in your problem statement. As others have alluded, those will all have a proprietary protocol. I presumed your goal was at a "higher level" than that.
What research have you done? Are you aware of the ZWave product line? (#1 in your list) ZWave consists of a "hub", usually a USB "stick", and any number of smart devices. You pair the devices with the hub and then issue commands to the hub which then control the paired devices.
If you used ZWave, you would then (#2 in your list) choose an ESP8266 which has a USB port -or- choose another device that does have one. You then learn how to send commands to the hub and you have accomplished #3 in your list.
(#4 in your list) Using ZWave, your focus would then be on learning Firebase and how to communicate with the ZWave hub over USB, which should not be too difficult (famous last words). The hardware to get started with ZWave will cost you about $64 USD for a hub and one device.