ESPer is a firmware for ESP8266 based IoT systems. IT provides a common platform for all kind of devices and establishes a common communication interface.
ESPer uses allows to implement firmware for classes of devices and let each of the device expose device-specific features. The features expose their current status and their controllable functions over a unified mqtt interface and allows easy integration in home-automation controllers. For easy management, devices publish current status information and can be updated over the WiFi interface.
For build, ESPer requires Sming (at least v3.2.0) to be installed.
During runtime, a 2.4GHz WiFi Network with WPA or WPA2 encryption is required. It is highly recommended to use a separated network for ESPer based devices to limit the broadcast and multicast traffic. In addition, a MQTT server is required.
Depending on the features used, some services must be provided in the environment during runtime:
- For OTA Updates, a Web-Server capable of serving files via HTTP is required.
- For Heartbeat, a timer service must be used to send the heartbeat messages.
See their README for further details.
Create a project directory and initialize it as git repository:
mkdir my-site
cd my-site
git init
Add the ESPer framework repository as submodule:
git submodule add https://github.com/esper-hub/esper.git
Then copy esper/Configuration.mx.example to ./Configuration.mk and change it according to the target environment.
This config file contains your environment specific settings like WiFi credentials and Servers to use.
Take some time to walk through the available options.
Inside the project-directory, create a subdirectory called devices/mydev and add your device specific code here.
The code must implement a function Device* createDevice() which returns a device instance.
Execute the makefile in the ESPer directory while specifying the site directory:
make -C esper SITE=$(pwd)
Boot the ESP into the flash mode and execute the following command:
make -C esper SITE=$(pwd) mydev/flash