IOT ESP8266 Tutorial – Connect to the IBM Bluemix Internet of Things

This is the fifth of a multi-part posting on the ESP8266.   In this posting we are showing to connect to the IBM Bluemix Internet of Things Service.  In the next ESP8266 posting we will show how to display your data in the IBM Bluemix IOT Real-Time Analytics service.

One item of help we can offer.   We have had a difficult time with the IBM Bluemix on the Safari browsers.   Changing to Chrome made things work much better.

For this series, we are using a IOT device designed by SwitchDoc Labs based on the ESP8266 WiFi/processor in two variants.  One device connected to a TSC3574 I2C Color Sensor and the other device a portable IoT connected heart rate pulse detector.

Part 1  IOT ESP8266 Tutorial – Using nodeMCU/LUA

Part 2 IOT ESP8266 Timer Tutorial – Arduino IDE

Part 3 IOT ESP8266 Tutorial – Using the Arduino IDE

Part 4 IOT ESP8266 Tutorial – AT Command Set Firmware

Part 5 IOT ESP8266 Tutorial – Connect to the IBM Bluemix Internet of Things

Part 6 IOT ESP8266 Tutorial – Sending ESP8266 Data to the IBM Bluemix IOT

Part 7 IOT ESP8266 Tutorial – The IOT Application and Source Code

Part 8 IOT ESP8266 Tutorial – Displaying the data on the IBM Bluemix IOT

We are using the Adafruit ESP8266 Huzzah breakout board for these postings.

The ESP8266

The ESP8266 is made by a privately held company in China called Espressif.   They are a fabless semiconductor company that just came out of nowhere and shook up the whole industry.   Now all the major players are working on inexpensive versions of an IOT chip with WiFi connectivity.  And they are all struggling to make it as inexpensive as the ESP8266

The Adafruit ESP8266 Huzzah

The Adafruit ESP8266 Huzzah board is a great  breakout for the ESP8266.  It makes it much easier to use with the Raspberry Pi than the really cheap modules.

Most of the low cost modules are not breadboard friendly, don’t have an onboard 3.3V regulator or level shifting for signals.  The Huzzah has all of those features.  For more on the ESP8266 Huzzah board see this posting.

The IBM Bluemix Internet of Things Solution

Bluemix is an implementation of IBM’s Open Cloud Architecture that enables you to rapidly create, deploy, and manage  cloud applications for the Internet of Things. There are a significant  growing ecosystem of runtime frameworks and services.  Blue mix provides a dashboard for you to create, view, and manage your applications, devices and services.  The Bluemix dashboard also provides the ability to manage organizations, spaces, and user access.

We did find that the “dashboard” paradigm in the Bluemix system somewhat of a misnomer and a bit confusing.  Instead of having one dashboard, you have dashboards for every service that you attach.  It’s easy to get lost in the sequence.  But with some perseverance we got through the learning curve.

Bluemix provides access to a wide variety of services that can be incorporated into an application both delivered from IBM and third party vendors.

For more complex applications, you have a set of runtimes that you can build your applications on using a variety of databases and frameworks.  Some of the more common ones are:

• – Node.js
• – PHP
• – Python
• – Ruby

 

Joining IBM Bluemix and the IoT Foundation

The IoT Foundation is the IBM Bluemix service that we will need to hook up the ESP8266 to the Bluemix cloud service.  You will need to create an IBM ID account.  The steps are:

1. Create an IBM ID account here
2. Validate your account through the IBM sent email
3. Go to the IBM Bluemix site and click Log In
4. Sign in on the login page
5. Go to the BlueMix Dashboard
6. Click USE SERVICES OR APIS
7. Add the Internet of Things Foundation Service (It is WAY down at the bottom of the list!)

You should then have a screen similar to the one below, with the exception of the “IoT Real-Time Insights” which will be added in the next steps.

 

 

 

 

 

Next Up?  The Device and ESP8266 Software

Now you have added the IoT services to your Bluemix account.  In our next posting, we will add an ESP8266 device to the Bluemix account, provide example code for your use and then see the results as below: