Fun project by Brian Wharton spotted online for controlling the lighting of his plant seedlings via Adafruit.io – interesting that he uses Visual Micro for debugging. You can read more on his blog or see the code here on GitHub.

Here is a quick project that I did to control lighting for our seedlings. I wanted something that could be controlled via MQTT and then managed in Thingsboard. On this initial prototype, I am using Adafruit’s IOT http://io.adafruit.com. It works pretty well, but is limited in some of the features that I want (like scheduling events on a timed basis).

The components of the project are:

• NodeMCU ESP8266 module. I am developing in c++
• Visual Micro plugin for Visual Studio. Much easier for debugging and features than just the straight Arduino IDE
• IOT Relay (See on Amazon): This is an enclosed relay for both AC and DC switching. And it has a simple port that allows you to control from a microcontroller.

Read more here.

Used @adafruit io.adafruit.com for the dashboard to control a NodeMCU ESP8266 microcontroller via MQTT. The goal is to have this controllable via both a dashboard and a timing

Read more here.