2 templates, only one device!

Need Help With My Project
1

Under the free plan, I can have up to 3 templates but only 2 devices. What is the usefulness/purpose of that 3rd template ?

Is it possible to create 2 templates that would both share the same physical device ?

What I need is (still under the free plan) to have 2 different mobile apps controlling the exact same device but displaying/controlling a different sub-set of the available widgets.

Thanks for your help.

2

I think it might have been done because some Blynk IoT early adopters were given additional devices, so an additional template is useful for them.

No, you can have a “many to one” relationship with devices to templates - in other words a single template can have multiple devices linked to that template.
But, a device can only have one parent template.

You can’t do that with the free plan.
You might be able to do this with a Device Info Tab in the Plus/Pro plan, as a way to limit access to a UI that only you (as the administrator has access to).

The only other option is to use two free accounts and either a ‘sacrificial’ hardware device which simply forwards/receives data between one account and another using the REST API, or Node-Red to do the same thing.

Pete.

3

Hi Pete, going back quite a few years when I started with the Legacy Blynk and needed help you have always provided awesome explanations and this time is no exception. I kind of expected that answer but hey, had to try… :wink:

Thanks a lot for your great support,
Jean-Pierre Roy

1 Like
4

You can also try automation
https://docs.blynk.io/en/concepts/automations

5

I admit to not having looked into automation much.

Due to the loss of a number of quite useful widgets ( like segmented switches and drop down menus ) from the legacy Blynk ( cause I can only afford the free plan ) my solution of adapting my old project to the new Blynk leads to using the maximum (30) datastreams and widgets.

I would like to create 2 different mobile apps that would control a single device. Each app would have about 20 widgets each (because there would be some overlap).

Can you provide a bit more insight as to how automation could help me in that specific scenario !

Thanks

6

You can use automation to achieve that (read the documentation for more details), but the only disadvantage is the limitation (5 automations per organization).

You can use the HttpClient library instead.