Using Blynk with Tiny Circuit boards

Need Help With My Project
1

Is Tiny Circuit still compatible? Or is raspberryPI or an Arduino board required?

Urgent as project deadline in 4 weeks!

2
3

Hi,

Understood. What I have is the TinyZero unfortunately not the TinyCircuits TinyDuino (CC3000).

I might be able to get my hands on the PI 3 or ESP32.

  1. Is there a direction that you could direct me to?

  2. Are there are any plugs that you can direct me to purchase?

  3. Is the bottom image required?

    IMG_7094
    IMG_70941284Ă—2778 425 KB

4

I don’t know how you think a Zigbee dongle is going to help.

Life would be far easier if you chose a board that had native WiFi connectivity, but I guess one solution would be to write some code that will run on your device that can integrate with the Blynk NCP firmware running on an ESP-01 or similar, but you would need to do that yourself.

Pete.

1 Like
5

Hi the dongle portion is to allow me to possibly connect the TinyCircuit boards to the SmartPlugs and also to Blynk. As TinyZero by itself is not compatible with blynk…

We are given the TinyShield WIFI Chip but we are unable to connect it due to TinyZero being incompatible it seems.

I can get my hands on a raspberry PI 3 or a ESP32 by tmr.

Thanks for responding btw.

6

How is this going to achieve this connection to the Blynk servers?

From what I understand the TinyZero and TinyShield are compatible with each other, but not with any existing Blynk library.
If you can use the TinyZero and TinyShield together to establish an internet connection then you could use Blynk via the HTTP(s) API, but that assumes that the TinyZero has a library that is capable of making API calls using an HTTP client,

Either way, making this stuff work will be down to you, as this is unsupported hardware from a Blynk point of view, and hardware that very few (if any) forum members will have access to.

Pete.

7

Yup that is correct. The " use Blynk via the HTTP(s) API, but that assumes that the TinyZero has a library that is capable of making API calls using an HTTP client" part is what seems not possible. We might look at using ESP32 or a Raspberry PI at possibly doing so…

8

I’d avoid using a Pi, but it does depend to a certain extent which Pi you’re referring to.

An ESP8266 or ESP32 is the simplest approach, but as a stand-alone device and using the C++ Blynk library.

Pete.

9

Hmm I should be loaning the PI 3 model.

I see hmm the ESP32 is what I should be able to get my hands on.

About the C++ Blynk library could I check if you are referring to the one in Arduino application to download?

Cheers,
SK

10

Yes.

Pete.

11

I see ok.

For smart plugs wise are there specific ones that would work with Blynk tho?

Cheers,
SK

12

Most ESP8266 based smart sockets can be reprogrammed to work directly with Blynk if you wish.
I’ve used the Shelly S26 and Shelly Plug S devices to run Blynk and similar code before.

It depends what you’re trying to achieve though.

Pete.

13

I think the idea is if the ESP32 or RaspberryPI works with Blynk then the idea is to connect the IOS app to the plug and control it there. However if its able to output the powerdraw to the TinyScreen I’m using here then I think that’s the ultimate goal.

14

So displaying that in the Blynk app wouldn’t be enough?

Pete.

15

I’m afraid not as the minimum criteria of my project is to utilize Tiny Circuits in some way at the end of the outcome. It doesn’t necessarily need to be the main “brains” of the project though.

I’m open to any suggestion as so far the only thing I can think of is to make the screen show some kind of readings or smth.

Cheers,
SK

16

Is using Blynk also one of your minimum criteria?

Pete.

17

Nope but the aim is to also control the system via some kind of app.

Update: I also managed to make this : Blink an LED with ESP32 (with WiFi provisioning and OTA) work so far.

Now not sure how I can implement the smart plug and tiny circuit into this system.