Get Started with Microsoft Azure IoT Starter Kit - Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 (Arduino-compatible)

Note: this article has been archived and it is not longer updated. Instructions may not be totally up to date.

Looking for something simple? This tutorial is very complete and contains a lot of detail. If you want something quick and simple, try one of these:

• Azure IoT HTTP protocol sample
• Azure IoT MQTT protocol sample

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  This page contains technical information to help you get familiar with Azure IoT using the Azure IoT Starter Kit - Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 (Arduino-compatible). You will find two tutorials that will walk you through different scenarios: the first tutorial will show you how to connect your Azure IoT Starter kit to our Remote Monitoring preconfigured solution from Azure IoT Suite. In the second tutorial, you will leverage Azure IoT services to create your own IoT architecture.

You can choose to start with whichever tutorial you want to. If you've never worked with Azure IoT services before, we encourage you to start with the Remote Monitoring solution tutorial, because all of the Azure services will be provisioned for you in a built-in preconfigured solution. Then you can explore how each of the services work by going through the second tutorial.

We hope you enjoy the process. Please provide feedback if there's anything that we can improve.

Don't have a kit yet?: Click here

• Running a Simple Remote Monitoring Solution on Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266
• Using Microsoft Azure IoT to Process and Use Sensor Data to Indicate Abnormal Temperatures

• 1.1 Tutorial Overview
• 1.2 Before Starting
  • 1.2.1 Required Software
  • 1.2.2 Required Hardware
• 1.3 Connect your device to the Temperature sensor
• 1.4 Create a New Azure IoT Suite Remote Monitoring solution and Add Device
• 1.5 Configure the Arduino IDE
  • 1.5.1 Add the Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 to the Arduino IDE
  • 1.5.2 Configuration settings
  • 1.5.3 Install Library Dependencies
• 1.6 Modify the Remote Monitoring Sample
• 1.7 Build and Run Your Remote Monitoring Sample
• 1.8 View the Sensor Data from the Remote Monitoring Portal
• 1.9 Stop using the Azure IoT Suite
  • 1.9.1 Delete the Azure IoT Suite
  • 1.9.2 Stop the Azure IoT Suite
  • 1.9.3 Downsize the Azure IoT Suite
• 1.10 Next steps

• For more information, see: Adafruit DHT22 sensor setup.

At the end of your work, your Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 should be connected with a working sensor.

• Log in to Azure IoT Suite with your Microsoft account and click Create a new Solution

Note: For first time users, click here to get your Azure free trial which gives you $200 of credit to get started.

• Click the select button in the Remote Monitoring option

• Type in a solution name. For this tutorial we’ll be using “HuzzahSuite” (You will have to name it something else. Make it unique. I.E. "ContosoSample")

• Choose your subscription and desired region to deploy, then click Create Solution
• Wait for Azure to finish provisioning your IoT suite (this process may take up to 10 minutes), and then click Launch

Note: You may be asked to log back in. This is to ensure your solution has proper permissions associated with your account.

• Open the link to your IoT Suite’s “Solution Dashboard.” You may have been redirected there already.

• This opens your personal remote monitoring site at the URL <Your Azure IoT Hub suite name>.azurewebsites.net (e.g. HuzzahSuite.azurewebsites.net)
• Click Add a Device at the lower left hand corner of your screen

• Add a new custom device

• Enter your desired device ID. In this case we’ll use _“Huzzah_wDHT22”, and then click Check ID

• If Device ID is available, go ahead and click Create

• IMPORTANT NOTE: Write down your device ID, Device Key, and IoT Hub Hostname to enter into the code you’ll run on your device later 

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• Make sure your device displays in the devices section. The device status is Pending until the device establishes a connection to the remote monitoring solution.

In this step, we will be using the Arduino IDE. If you have not downloaded the IDE, please download it from the Arduino website.

You will need to install the Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 board extension for the Arduino IDE. In our steps below, we will be following the same instructions as in this link, which you can also use for troubleshooting. After going through the following steps, you should have a working sample with a blinking light on your board.

Open the Arduino IDE and go to File -> Preferences

Go to the field titled "Additional Boards Manager URLs:" and type http://arduino.esp8266.com/stable/package_esp8266com_index.json

Click on Tools -> Board -> Boards Manager

Search for esp8266, left click on the result titled esp8266 by ESP8266 Community and click on install

After the board is installed select Tools -> Board -> Adafruit HUZZAH ESP8266

If you have any problems while installing the libraries, you can find more instructions here.

Note: Starting on version 1.0.17, AzureIoTHub required the AzureIoTUtility and one of the available protocols. These samples use the AzureIoTProtocol_MQTT, but it is prepared to work with AzureIoTProtocol_HTTP too.

• Unzip the example code, go to the remote_monitoring directory and double-click the file remote_monitoring.ino to open the project in the Arduino IDE.
• In the project, edit the iot_configs.h, look for the following lines of code:

#define IOT_CONFIG_WIFI_SSID            "<Your WiFi network SSID or name>"
#define IOT_CONFIG_WIFI_PASSWORD        "<Your WiFi network WPA password or WEP key>"

• Replace the placeholders with your WiFi name (SSID) and the WiFi password. 
• Find the Device id, Iot Hub Hostname and Device Key that you wrote down, when you saw the following screen after adding your custom device into the Azure IoT suite:

If you cannot find this data, then you can go to your Remote Monitoring Solution in Azure IoT Suite, click on Devices and then select your device. Check the device properties section at the right part of the page for the DEVICEID, HOSTNAME and Authentication Keys (bottom right of the page). Click on "View Authentication keys" and copy "KEY 1" as your deviceKey.

• Look for the following line of code and replace the placeholders connection information (also remove the "<" and ">" when replacing the information):

#define IOT_CONFIG_CONNECTION_STRING    "HostName=<host_name>.azure-devices.net;DeviceId=<device_id>;SharedAccessKey=<device_key>"

• Save with Control-s

• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/iot-suite-remote-monitoring-sample-walkthrough/
• https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/iot-suite-connecting-devices/

Go to https://www.azureiotsuite.com, click on your existing solution (not on the "Launch" button) and then click the red button Delete Solution in the right pane

In the Microsoft Azure Portal

• Click on "All Resources"
• For each Stream Analytics and Web App resource:
  • Click on the resource and click the "Stop" button in the new blade that appears
• For each IoT Hub resource:
  • Click on the resource and click the "Devices" button in the new blade that appears
  • Click on each device in the list and click the "Disable" button that appears in the new blade at the bottom

1) Visit this guide to run the solution in demo mode and reduce the Azure consumption.

2) Disable the simulated devices created with the solution (Go to Devices>>Select the device>> on the device details menu on the right, clich on Disable Device. Repeat with all the simulated devices).

Please visit our Azure IoT Dev Center for more samples and documentation on Azure IoT.

• 2.1 Tutorial Overview
• 2.2 Before Starting
  • 2.2.1 Required Software
  • 2.2.2 Required Hardware
• 2.3 Connect the Sensor Module to your Device
• 2.4 Create a New Microsoft Azure IoT Hub and Add Device
• 2.5 Create an Event Hub
• 2.6 Create a Storage Account for Table Storage
• 2.7 Create a Stream Analytics job to Save IoT Data in Table Storage and Raise Alerts
• 2.8 Node Application Setup
• 2.9 Add the Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 to the Arduino IDE
• 2.10 Install Library Dependencies
• 2.11 Modify the Command Center Sample
• 2.12 Build Your Command Center Sample
• 2.13 Next steps

• Git - For cloning the required repositories
• Node.js - For the Node application, we will go over this later.
• Arduino IDE, version 1.6.8. (Earlier versions will not work with the Azure IoT library)
• Sensor interface library from Adafruit.

• Using this image as a reference, connect your DHT22 and Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 to the breadboard

Note: Column on the left corresponds to sensor and on the Right to board. On the image, the board is place between 10 and 30 and sensor between 1 and 9. Additionally, when counting the - pins, start from the right and count in, as these do not align with the numbers indicated on the board.

Note: The resistor can change a little from one kit to another, e.g. it can be 330 Ohm (orange, orange, brown) or 560 Ohm (green, blue, brown). Both will work with success.

• Connect the board, sensor, and parts on the breadboard:

• For the pins, we will use the following wiring:

• For more information, see: Adafruit DHT22 sensor setup.

At the end of your work, your Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 should be connected with a working sensor.

• To create your Microsoft Azure IoT Hub and add a device, follow the instructions outlined in the Setup IoT Hub Microsoft Azure Iot SDK page.
• After creating your device, make note of your connection string to enter into the code you’ll run on your device later

• Log on to the Microsoft Azure Portal
• Click on New -> Internet of Things-> Event Hub
• Enter the following settings for the Event Hub Namespace (use a name of your choice for the event hub and the namespace):
  • Name: Your choice (we chose Huzzah2Suite)
  • Pricing Tier: Basic
  • Subscription: Your choice
  • Resource Group: Your choice
  • Location: Your choice
• Click on Create
• Wait until the Event Hub Namespace is created, and then create an Event Hub using the following steps:
  • Click on your Huzzah2Suite Event Hub Namespace (or pick any other name that you used)
  • Click the Add Event Hub
  • Name: huzzahEventHub
• Click on Create
• Wait until the new Event Bus is created
• Click on the Event Hubs arrow in the Overview tab (might require a few clicks, until the UI is updated)
• Select the huzzahEventHub eventhub and go in the Configure tab in the Shared Access Policies section, add a new policy:
  • Name = readwrite
  • Permissions = Send, Listen
• Click Save at the bottom of the page, then click the Dashboard tab near the top and click on Connection Information at the bottom
• Copy down the connection string for the readwrite policy you created.
• From the your IoT Hub Settings (The Resource that has connected dots) on the Microsoft Azure Portal, click the Messaging blade (found in your settings), write down the Event Hub-compatible name
• Look at the Event-hub-compatible Endpoint, and write down this part: sb://thispart.servicebus.windows.net/ we will call this one the IoTHub EventHub-compatible namespace

• Log on to the Microsoft Azure Portal
• In the menu, click New and select Data + Storage then Storage Account
  • Name: Your choice (we chose huzzahstorage)
  • Deployment model: Classic
  • Performance: Standard
  • Replication: Read-access geo-redundant storage (RA-GRS)
  • Subscription: Your choice
  • Resource Group: Your choice
  • Location: Your choice
• Once the account is created, find it in the resources blade or click on the pinned tile, go to Settings, Keys, and write down the primary connection string.

• Log on to the Microsoft Azure Portal

• In the menu, click New, then click Internet of Things, and then click Stream Analytics Job

• Enter a name for the job (We chose “HuzzahStorageJob”), a preferred region, then choose your subscription. At this stage you are also offered to create a new or to use an existing resource group. Choose the resource group you created earlier.

• Once the job is created, open your Job’s blade or click on the pinned tile, and find the section titled “Job Topology” and click the Inputs tile. In the Inputs blade, click on Add

• Enter the following settings:

  • Input Alias = TempSensors
  • Source Type = Data Stream
  • Source = IoT Hub
  • IoT Hub = Huzzah2Suite (use the name for the IoT Hub you create before)
  • Shared Access Policy Name = iothubowner
  • Shared Access Policy Key = The iothubowner primary key can be found in your IoT Hub Settings -> Shared access policies
  • IoT Hub Consumer Group = "" (leave it to the default empty value)
  • Event serialization format = JSON
  • Encoding = UTF-8

• Back to the Stream Analytics Job blade, click on the Query tile (next to the Inputs tile). In the Query settings blade, type in the below query and click Save:

SELECT
    DeviceId,
    EventTime,
    MTemperature as TemperatureReading
INTO
    TemperatureTableStorage
from TempSensors
WHERE
   DeviceId is not null
   and EventTime is not null

SELECT
    DeviceId,
    EventTime,
    MTemperature as TemperatureReading
INTO   
    TemperatureAlertToEventHub
FROM
    TempSensors
WHERE MTemperature>25

Note: You can change the 25 to 0 when you're ready to generate alerts to look at. This number represents the temperature in degrees celsius to check for when creating alerts. 25 degrees celsius is 77 degrees fahrenheit.

• Back to the Stream Analytics Job blade, click on the Outputs tile and in the Outputs blade, click on Add
• Enter the following settings then click on Create:
  • Output Alias = TemperatureTableStorage
  • Sink = Table Storage
  • Subscription = Provide table settings storage manually
  • Storage account = huzzahstorage (The storage account you created earlier)
  • Storage account key = (The primary key for the storage account made earlier, can be found in Settings -> Keys -> Primary Access Key)
  • Table Name = TemperatureRecords (Your choice - If the table doesn’t already exist, Local Storage will create it)
  • Partition Key = DeviceId
  • Row Key = EventTime
  • Batch size = 1
• Back to the Stream Analytics Job blade, click on the Outputs tile, and in the Outputs blade, click on Add
• Enter the following settings then click on Create:
  • Output Alias = TemperatureAlertToEventHub
  • Sink = Event Hub
  • Subscription = Provide table settings storage manually
  • Service Bus Namespace = Huzzah2Suite
  • Event Hub Name = huzzaheventhub (The Event Hub you made earlier)
  • Event Hub Policy Name = readwrite
  • Event Hub Policy Key = Primary Key for readwrite Policy name (That's the one you wrote down after creating the event hub)
  • Partition Key Column = 0
  • Event Serialization format = JSON
  • Encoding = UTF-8
  • Format = Line separated
• Back in the Stream Analytics blade, start the job by clicking on the Start button at the top

Note: Make sure to stop your Command Center jobs once you have when you take a break or finish to avoid unnecessary Azure consumption! (See: Troubleshooting)

• If you do not have it already, install Node.js and NPM.
  • Windows and Mac installers can be found here: https://nodejs.org/en/download/
    • Ensure that you select the options to install NPM and add to your PATH.
  • Linux users can use the commands:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nodejs
sudo apt-get install npm

• Additionally, make sure you have cloned the project repository locally by issuing the following command in your desired directory:

git clone https://github.com/Azure-Samples/iot-hub-c-huzzah-getstartedkit.git

• Open the command_center_node folder in your command prompt (cd <path to locally cloned repro>/command_center_node) and install the required modules by running the following:

npm install -g bower
npm install
bower install

• Open the config.json file and replace the information with your project. See the following for instructions on how to retrieve those values.

  • eventhubName:
    • Open the Classic Azure Management Portal
    • Open the Service Bus namespace you created earlier
    • Switch to the EVENT HUBS page
    • You can see and copy the name of your event hub from that page
  • ehConnString:
    • Click on the name of the event hub from above to open it
    • Click on the "CONNECTION INFORMATION" button along the bottom.
    • From there, click the button to copy the readwrite shared access policy connection string.
  • deviceConnString:
    • Use the information on the Manage IoT Hub to retrieve your device connection string using either the Device Explorer or iothub-explorer tools.
  • iotHubConnString:
    • In the Azure Portal
    • Open the IoT Hub you created previously.
    • Open the "Settings" blade
    • Click on the "Shared access policies" setting
    • Click on the "service" policy
    • Copy the primary connection string for the policy
  • storageAccountName:
    • In the Azure Portal
    • Open the classic Storage Account you created previously to copy its name
  • storageAccountKey:
    • Click on the name of the storage account above to open it
    • Click the "Settings" button to open the Settings blade
    • Click on the "Keys" setting
    • Click the button next to the "PRIMARY ACCESS KEY" top copy it
  • storageTableName:
    • This must match the name of the table that was used in the Stream Analytics table storage output above.
    • If you used the instructions above, you would have named it TemperatureRecords
    • If you named it something else, enter the name you used instead.

{
    "port": "3000",
    "eventHubName": "event-hub-name",
    "ehConnString": "Endpoint=sb://name.servicebus.windows.net/;SharedAccessKeyName=readwrite;SharedAccessKey=aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa=",
    "deviceConnString": "HostName=name.azure-devices.net;DeviceId=device-id;SharedAccessKey=aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa=="
    "iotHubConnString": "HostName=iot-hub-name.azure-devices.net;SharedAccessKeyName=service;SharedAccessKey=aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa=",
    "storageAcountName": "aaaaaaaaaaa",
    "storageAccountKey": "aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa==",
    "storageTable": "TemperatureRecords"
}

• Now it is time to run it! Enter the following command:

node server.js

• You should then see something similar to:

app running on http://localhost:3000
client connected

• Visit the url in your browser and you will see the Node app running!

To deploy this project to the cloud using Azure, you can reference Creating a Node.js web app in Azure App Service.

Next, we will update your device so that it can interact with all the things you just created.

• Follow the instructions here. There you will see how to add a URL pointing to Adafruit's repository of board extensions, how to make the Adafruit Feather Huzzah ESP8266 board selectable under the Tools menu, and how to get the Blink sketch to run.
  • As we explained on the item 1.5, boards with microB connector don't have the GPIO0 button. So, in the 'Blink Test', ignore the steps to put the board in the bootload mode, and go directly to the step to upload the sketch via the IDE.
• After going through this, you should have a working sample with a blinking light on your board.
  • If you run into any connection issues, unplug the board, hold the reset button, and while still holding it, plug the board back in. This will flash to board to try again.

The Adafruit Unified Sensor library is also needed. This can be downloaded here. Instructions for manually installing a library can be found here.

static const char ssid[] = "[Your WiFi network SSID or name]";
static const char pass[] = "[Your WiFi network WPA password or WEP key]";
static const char* connectionString = "[Device Connection String]";

static const char DeviceId[] = "[Device Name]";
static const char connectionString[] = "[Device Connection String]";

Note: Make sure to stop your Command Center jobs once you have when you finish to avoid unnecessary Azure consumption! (See: Troubleshooting)

Please visit our Azure IoT Dev Center for more samples and documentation on Azure IoT.

Troubleshooting

Stopping Provisioned Services

• In the Microsoft Azure Portal
  • Click on "All Resources"
  • For each Stream Analytics and Web App resource:
    • Click on the resource and click the "Stop" button in the new blade that appears
  • For each IoT Hub resource:
    • Click on the resource and click the "Devices" button in the new blade that appears
    • Click on each device in the list and click the "Disable" button that appears in the new blade at the bottom

Data is not showing up in the Node.js application

In this section we will explain how to see the data flowing from the Arduino application to the Node.js application:

• Arduino application: In the Arduino IDE go to Tools -> Serial Monitor
• IoT Hub: Use Device Explorer
• Azure Storage Table: Use Azure Storage Explorer