I don’t believe the Blynk users not want the option to buy additional device for some cost.
The reason they didn’t until now can be they just starting to migrating to v2, and feel safe, because that was the announcement from Blynk few months ago.
Right now I have migrated 6 device, and working on a solution with a proxy Device to control the old native light light Device.
For me it was easier to just hit the buy option there now are gone.
As you write on the price sheet “PLUS” = For more advanced personal projects, that’s my personal needs.
I have only 2 wishes, additional device buy option, and more than one device in the same page / dashboard.
My private/personal home automation use 13 devices connected to Blynk. Some devices control many “sub-devices”. I probably have some 40 end-devices in my home. And I want more …
This is not at all a commercial system. It is just anyone trying to measure and control lots of things in the home.
- Is it really superimportant to measure the temp in the fridge? Maybe not, but it is … “cool”.
@TorNor keep in your mind that you can connect multiple relays and sensors to 1 esp32 . For example I’m connecting 16ch relay module to 1 esp32 and it’s working just fine.
Connecting many relays to one device is sometimes very good and sometimes even superior. However, sometimes they are just too far apart from each other. And you dont want to lay out wires …
Then, of course, you can connect via wifi. All is possible.
I myself use ESP-NOW quite much which i have found to be very good for “sensors” to be battery operated and/or solar power operated. I then have “gateways” receiving from 16 and 13 (?) sub-devices on ESP-NOW and sending further to Blynk. This used for one-way communication. When i need two-way i dont use ESP-NOW. (It is possible, but thjese sensors operate in deep sleep mode and not designed for two-way …)
Still, it is very nice to “just add in” (think plug-n-play) another device to a Blynk project (as in Legacy). No need to adjust the devices and code, just “integrate” on the upper level. Blynk that is.
I also think this is not really covered well in Blynk IoT (2.0).
Automations are great, but not a replacement for this “device integration” view. Not really - in my mind, at least.
Now, i cant - without major redesign of my system and devices - view the temp from 4 devices in same graph. Pity.
@John93 I am fare away from that level where I can use a 16ch relay module
For now I measure
Electricity production and import from from grid
Water usage
Control the pound pumps, measure water level with more
Control Greenhouse watering system with more
Control grow tent
Native Blynk takes care of the wife’s light bulb for now
@Jonas thanks for the inspiration I will spent some time to make the light bulb device as sub device
The “wife’s light bulb” APP needs to be bulletproof
Those people who are using Blynk for personal projects, like @TorNor and @jonas ought to take a bit of time to look at Node-Red.
I have a Blynk Pro account courtesy of Blynk, plus some additional free devices because of the introductory offer, but I only really use two devices in my Blynk app.
I have one device for my home in the UK, and one for my place in Spain.
All of my devices in each location talk to Node-Red via MQTT, and most of my logic handling is done in Node-Red.
Blynk simply acts as a way to view the data and to trigger actions that are then processed in Node-Red.
Having one Blynk device allows data from multiple physical devices to be presented in the same mobile dashboard.
It sound like you dont what us to use Blynk for personal use. ?
Node-Red is probably a good product, but I want Blynk only and not complicate the data path.
I my home the wife is say not turn on the light , but blynk the light, so it seems the name are en same posision as google it.
I think we speak with different skill level, I am electronic engineer, not a software engineer so i can easy make lot of device
As I see it you need lot more than 2 device , how can you sleep well in Spain, not knowing there is not a water leak in your house in UK, or a thunderstorm killed your freezerator.
Why do you say that? I’m certainly advocating using Blynk as the front-end for this type of system, it’s the bet interface I’ve come across so far.
That’s your choice, but clearly amalgamating data into one Blynk dashboard isn’t that easy isi g Blynk alone.
I’m not quite sure I understand the point you’re making here, but if you’re talking about using Google assistant or Amazon Alexa then Node-Red makes this easy to achieve.
I think you misunderstand what I’m saying. I have around 30 physical devices in Spain, but these talk to Node-Red via MQTT, and Blynk sees only Node-Red, which it treats as a single Blynk device.
The data from these 30 devices can be viewed in a single Blynk web or mobile dashboard.
When I migrated from Blynk 0.1 to Blynk IOT I learned how to do UDP and TCP between ESP8266s and ESP32’s I now have an unlimited amount of nodes talking to one ESP8266 that is a hub to blynk. Has been flawless for about 2 or 3 months now. Both UDP and TCP were only a few lines of code. Might want to consider adding that capability to your tool kit.
You still write C++ code for the ESPa, to talk to Node-Red via MQTT, and to listen for MQTT commands and take the appropriate actions when they arrive.
But most of the logic can be put into Node-Red, using it as a ‘rules engine’ for your system. This means that most of the time the automation logic can be updated via the Node-Red web page rather than uploading new code to the devices.
No, the RPI runs the Blynk plug-in for Node-Red, so the Blynk server sees the Pi without any port forwarding.
I do run ZeroTier on my Pi so that I can access the Node-Red editor remotely, but that isn’t 100% necessary.
