MyDevices Cayenne, headquartered in Los Angeles, California, is a drag-and-drop IoT Project Builder, which offers what is often termed as device-agnostic technology. In other words, their plug-and-play online dashboard is compatible with various systems without requiring any special adaptations. Customers, then, can bring their IoT projects from prototype to mass production, as well as develop and deploy IoT solutions into their existing infrastructure and business. Acrobotic, on the other hand, is an open-source electronics startup dedicated to the design of hardware and software products for use in education, do-it-yourself projects, arts, and science. Through their video tutorials, projects, and demos, they aim to enable tinkerers of all ages and skill levels to interact with the physical world around them, employing a wide variety of digital and analog devices.

In its latest video, Acrobotic has teamed up with MyDevices Cayenne to present a step-by-step process of how to write code in the Arduino IDE, in order to monitor and control ESP8266 from anywhere in the world. The code allows ESP8266 to communicate with the Cayenne platform, which in turn allows users to monitor and control ESP8266 through a very intuitive dashboard.

Users should set up an account on Cayenne first and, then, utilize the Cayenne dashboard to setup an LED controller and a temperature-and-humidity monitor. The communication between ESP8266 and Cayenne is realized by using a lightweight protocol called Message-Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT). The MQTT protocol is ideal for low-bandwidth, high-latency networks, and for low-power devices which should utilize as little memory as possible.  

Furthermore, the Cayenne platform functions as the MQTT ‘broker’, the mediator between ESP8266 and any other connected devices on the network. In the background, the Cayenne platform handles every message queue transmitted and received by the devices that users have connected to it. This way, users are able to monitor and control ESP8266 from anywhere in the world simply by accessing the Cayenne platform. 

The Cayenne library for ESP8266 can be found on GitHub. A more detailed version of the code written for the relevant YouTube tutorial is available through: File → Examples → Cayenne-MQTT-ESP8266 → ESP8266. Additionally, a detailed guide to getting started with the ESP8266 development board can be found here.