WhatsApp-Based Home Automation

1. 1 Introduction Trim: Hello and welcome to this new course. Today, we'll talk about WhatsApp based home automation. This is asha from educational engineering team. As you know, most of the WhatsApp or any service automation requires monthly payments and it's a pain to connect to. In this course, we will share with you a technique to connect your home automation system to Watson freely without paying anything. We'll also explain how you can do that with any microcontroller that has Wi-Fi capability. By the end of this course, you will be able to achieve connecting your devices to the microcontroller. And you will start receiving messages on your WhatsApp regarding doorbell ringing or a light off or light on situation or any other situation. We used to use IFTTT for this Batson's the limited their free service so much, that is not a workable solution anymore. Now, Whatsapp has a developer program in which you can get access to the API. And my using this and using the free board that we will introduce today, it will be able to receive unlimited messages on your WhatsApp number for free. Now, let's talk about what you will learn in this course. First, we'll talk about the hardware and software requirements. Then we will talk about sitting up, WhatsApp. After that, we will start coding our board. Much could be any board. The same code works for Arduino, ESP, and other balls. As long as they have Wi-Fi connectivity. Then we will do a practical distinct for this code. And we'll show you how to control outputs and inputs easily through your Watson. I'm sure that at the end of this course, you will learn a lot of new things. And you will learn about WhatsApp boats and how they can benefit you in your daily life. Watching this introduction. 2. 2 Preparing the WhatsApp Bot Connection Trim: Hello and welcome this new lesson in which we are going to talk about the port that we are going to use to send and receive messages using WhatsApp for free. It's called me, but now you need to install WhatsApp on your phone and you'll need to add calling me both mobile number as a contact. If you want to call me bought.com and went to the free WhatsApp message. You can see the options. Now click send messages. And here you can see what you need to do to set this up. First, you need to add this mobile phone. Let me zoom in. And you need, once you have it added, it's better to name the contact with the same name, call me bought, then go to WhatsApp and send it a message. Which is basically this message I allow Call me what to send me messages. Make sure that all of these are small letters. Now, once you do that, you will receive two messages. One that called me bought, ABI is activated, and the other one is that you can now send messages using the API, which means that you have successfully enable this call me messages. Now, as you can see, once you have done this, it means that you are activated. Call me, but let me walk you through this in a practical manner. Now let's do it. First. I'm adding the number, then create a new contact and call it, call me Bob. Now, it's better to call it like that so that you know, from where they are getting these messages now paid over to WhatsApp. And once you are there, send a new message to call me. Start typing. I allow the message needs to be with the same letters. And you need to make sure that only i is capital in this message. So you'll need to write, I allow this fault to send me messages. So let's do that. My first attempt was wrong because I added ED. I allowed now you need to fight. I allow me to send me messages. Then you have to wait a few seconds. You will receive two messages. The first message is calling me Bot API activated for this number, which is my number and my API key is there. Now you can send messages using this API. Now if you'll receive these two messages, it means that everything was set correctly. Now, I didn't receive the link as we just saw. And I pasted this link on my Chrome web browser. And you can see here. Now, does it work? If you are seeing, this means that it works. And this is the message that was sent. And as you can see here, this is a test. Now if we went back to WhatsApp, we can see this message. So let's go back to WhatsApp. Here you can see this is a test which means that we did receive the message from my WhatsApp. Now we can change this message. We can send educational engineering. And here we can send. Now, this is the message that will be sent. For one tier. Here we will see the new message called educational engineering team. You need to wait a few seconds before receiving this message. But as long as you can see this, as you can see now, we have the message. Education engineering team means that the bot is working without any problems. Now if you did receive this message, means that you are ready to go to the next step that's watching this lesson. 3. 3 Coding The Board Trim fixed: Hello and welcome to this new lesson, annual charter going to start coding the ESP ball nor dart to send messages to our WhatsApp depending on certain conditions. Now, the first step is going to the Arduino IDE. And from there, we need to do few things. The first thing here is to create a new project. And inside this new project, we need first to set our Wi-Fi credentials. So constant pointer to character, SSID equal here your Wi-Fi name. Now we also need another color stance, which will be for the password. Now, here will be your Wi-Fi password. Now you can add a button you want. And you can surely add an LED. Let's say the poll. Now, let's go to the setup menu will keep going back and forth and the code. So here we need to set the pinMode. Pinmode or the baton. And four. Again, when moods here for the button will be input. Here for the lid will be output. The next thing is starting serial specific baud rate. So Serial.begin, a 115,200 baud rate and then a delay so that the cereal can stabilize. After doing that. The a 100 millisecond delay, then add a new line on the serial monitor. Now, we have to start connecting Todd Wi-Fi network, which would be the first step. So in here, we need to write connecting to. And here we need to derive the SSID of our Wi-Fi. After that, we will use the Wi-Fi that began library. Now in order to use this library, first, we need here to include the wildfire library. So you can go to Sketch Include Library. From here. You can check ESP theta2. You can include that library for PSP theta2. And if you keep scrolling, you can see that we have out of other libraries that you can use. We'll also need the HTTP client library. And now we will include the Wi-Fi library as well, include WiFi edge. After doing that, the next step is to start the Wi-Fi connection. So inside you will sit up. You need to go back here underneath the SSID and you need to call Wi-Fi SSID and password. Once done, we need to make sure that we are actually connected to Wi-Fi using the famous wild statements. Add a delay, half a seconds, then cilia to print. Now inside the while, if Wi-Fi status not equal, Wi-Fi connected. So if WiFi is not connected, WWL can connect it. Then you need to keep trying to connect to the Wi-Fi network. After that, if it did connect, you need to print a few things. So serial.print, LN. New line. Then after the new line, we would include the Wi-Fi. Connected will also include the IP address. Then we will call the IP address function local IP. Now, once done, this means that our void setup function is done. The next step here is to go to the void loop function. Now inside the void loop, the first thing that we need to do is as follows. First, we need to type that we are connecting to what's up. So serial.print. The next thing to serial.print. In here, you can simply write WhatsApp. After doing that, we need to call the Wi-Fi clients. So right, wi-fi client and call it a client. And we also need to declare an object of the class HTTP client. So right edge TTB client, and call it http. Now, you need to make sure that you are writing everything correctly. Sometimes it's splitters to verify the code. But first let's make sure that we have yes, we have two bonds are elected. Mine is called do it. Yes, because it's a tool didn't get difficult version one. Now, I will save the code. So let's call it WiFi, or WhatsApp. Would mention using WhatsApp. And let's select allocation. So here we will save it inside a folder and let's call it codes automation. Now, let's verify the code to see if it is recognizing that HTTP client library of nuts. Okay, now as you can see, here, we have fewer shares. D1 laws not declared in this scope, which is basically the number four, our button. So let's remove that. Let's come in this form now, we will get back to them when we are testing with the button on the lid. Now I forgot to change this, so let's change them with numbers. Now. Verify again. Done compiling, so everything design. Now, let's go back here. We need to create a new variable. Let's call this thing, send data. Then go back here and start. Now, the first thing that we need to send source and data will be the text from our WhatsApp. So let's putting that this is basically the first line that we need to bring. Okay, let's bring all of this and we can work on it here. So I would connect it here. Now we will start with the word sub up to the question mark, and we will copy this, paste it here. Then we need to say cin data. You can say plus equal. The next text, which is in this case the phone number. So after the question mark, take the phone number up to this point. Without Danmark. Now send data plus equal. In here, we need to add the text, which is basically this text. So we will take the text and we will stop by sending education engineering team. So up to this point, next step is sent data loss equal. And in here, we need to send the API key. So on. That's it. This is how easy it is. Now, the first step is to type http dot begin. Now there are slight modifications to the code once we start the testing process. And we will do them. Because this library keeps being updated, which cause a lot of issues with HTTP clients. Sorry. So now we need to send the request. So end's HTTP codes equal HTTP looked good. And after that, we will check. If the HTTP code is greater than 0. Then we need to get that request to the prompt response payload by typing string, the load equal http dot get string. Now this will get the request response payload and we'll print it out on the serial monitor. So print the response payload. Here, type pay load, which is basically the payload that we got from our HTTP. Now, once done, simply close the connection by typing http dot end, which is the int function. Now, let's verify again to make sure that we don't have any issues. Here. We have an issue. Let's check. Send data was not declared in this scope. Okay. It'd be panam. Is it a ten? Okay. Oxygen data was spilling it all. Now, again, that was not the pockets and data. He if he or she is unchanged. But if I again okay, done compiling, everything is called f. And I'll make sure that you have this wi-fi client, client, client HTTP. And now you are ready for the testing. Just change the Wi-Fi name and password to your WiFi name and password. And make sure to change the API key and done by lumbar with your API key and combine lumbar. Then you are good to go. You should be able to test this out on your board. Now when you are running this code, what will happen is that you will receive this message educational engineering team. Now if you didn't receive it or if there was a problem with the serial monitor means that something is wrong. So you need to double-check the code. Now, one more thing. This is not controlling any input or output on the ESP. There is two. This is the first phase, which is testing the actual connection. Then we will control a button and an LED. We will turn the LED on and off using WhatsApp. And we will do few modifications in the code. 4. 4 Making Modifications and Testing Trim: Hello and welcome to this new last one in which we are going to do a few modifications to all code to make it work better. Now the first thing that we need to do is to copy everything inside the loop here and leave the loop empty. Bowl, create a new function for all its send that to Watson and paste your code inside it. Now this is the first step. Now the second step would be changing from wi-fi client to change this from Wi-Fi. Wi-fi client secure, which is basically a more secure Wi-Fi connection that can deal with HTTPS. And after doing that, you need to make sure that you are changing the name and the password for your WiFi network. Then scroll down. Now we need to call this function inside the setup function. We don't want to call it inside the loop function because we don't want to keep sending What's up? This will over flow the amount of messages that we can send per hour. So I will send messages using setup. Now after doing that, we also need to do something here. As you can see, we are sending HTTP again here. Now what you need to do at this point is instead of sending the client and the data, you will only send one thing, which is the data. Let's remove the fluid from here. Now after that, we will implement the HTTP code. So HTTP code, after defining it as integer, will equal http dot post. Now after posting, we need to add two parentheses. Now inside the boss, we will send the data source and data here. So now we have STB posts and data, and the code will be stored here. After that, we can simply say STB equal is to build kit. It's up to you if you're on the postcode or the gate code. Now, once you are done with this step, you can move on to make sure that everything is everything correctly. Here the Wi-Fi clients needs to be changed with the same name here, Wi-Fi clients secure. So scroll all the way down my pipeline. Secure. Now save your code, make sure that everything is added correctly and verify it. Now, you can upload it anticipates out. But for me, I will use this platform. We have a course in which we explained how to simulate ESP 32 using this platform. And you need to add this code for the Wi-Fi connection because we are using our platform. So to make sure that this will platform has Wi-Fi enabled without our network SSID and password, you'll need to add this code. After doing that, let's copy the whole code from here and place it here. Now we need to make sure that all of these are above. This is just doing a few configurations. I'm just copying and pasting things. So the code or our code is paste it here. And we don't want this part, the Wi-Fi part, because we already have Wi-Fi connection, which is inside the simulated environment, since this whole page is already connected to the Internet. After doing that, you are ready to test things out. So hit Run here. Now this is the network or the simulation platform link, WO K wi.com. And once you have the code ready here, you can easily hit the Run button to start simulating and see the results. Now, as you can see here, connecting to Ashraf, connecting to WiFi, connecting to Watson. Now, as you can see, here, is the sentence that we have written here connecting to WhatsApp, and it was only printed once. Now, this is the result of running our code. Now we need to make sure that we have received a message. Now, since I've done this a lot, you can see the message here. If you scroll down. Now the time is 01:38 PM, and here's the message, one that a PM. And we just received our message from Whatsapp, bought from ESP fell to toolbox. Now if you use this code on your toolbar, you'll be able to do the same thing. You will keep receiving messages. Now, what you can do is basically unlimited. You can read a sensor. Which is something that will not explain here because this is not an ESP helps to, let's say, concentrated courses about controlling things using WhatsApp and your ESP theta2. Now you can connect a temperature sensor. And if the temperature is above a certain limit, you can simply send a message by calling this function send data to WhatsApp or send temperature to adsorb to send an alert that something went wrong. Now I will show you this in a quick example without inputs and outputs. So let's say that we have a temperature, and let's make it equal 50 degrees Celsius. Now we can go inside here, inside the loop and say if the temperature is above or equal 45, then we need to call this function washes, send that to watch Sub you can configure it to receive an input. And here you can change the message to hide in ritual detected by the detector. And now, if you try to stop and run the code again, you should expect to see an output here. And we should receive a message alert telling us that there is high temperature. Now in your house or on your, let's say anywhere we replaced your device. And this is basically the main concepts. You will receive notifications to adsorb indicating that there is high temperature. As you can see now it's connected. And in here, you can see that we will receive a message. It's around 14 to one PM. So we will wait a few seconds. Now. Try not to send a lot of messages every hour because you have like six to 103 messages per hour to WhatsApp. Now if you tried to send more messages, this will cause a problem. Which means that the platform will block you for an hour or two. And it happened with me more than once. So you need to make sure that you are not putting your code inside the while loop where the condition will keep running here. Now as you can see, the condition is planning again and again, which means that we will face an overflow problem just like before. Now for me, while testing this, I did cross the limit to the number of messages that I can receive the hour. That's why we haven't received the temperature message. But I think you got the point. Basically, you can add any sense for three the data and put a condition. And if this condition is met, then send a WhatsApp message and you can go from there. Now if you have any questions or if the code didn't work with you, or if you face any problem, I'm here to help. That's it for this lesson. Thanks for watching.