All you need to know about IoT device setup
Internet of Things is still very immature. There is not even a consensus in what it means. but as the quote says, there are no common agreed uniform standards just yet.
So, If you start your IoT development projects today, there might not be one simple way of doing secure IoT. However, I am going to focus on the challenges faced by the IoT device manufactures to provide the best methods to set up their devices.
Example — Bob bought a smart plug developed by HexaIoT. This smart plug can connect to internet and accessiable from anywhere in the world using mobile application. Bob needs to follow setup guide to make this smart plug work. Bob connects smart plug with HexaIoT application. Complete the first time setup steps. Now Bob can control this smart plug using mobile application.
Here is Wemo setup video for the first initialization
I think now you can understand what we will be going to discuss. We will look into the process needs to be developed by any IoT devices company to connect their devices with their cloud platform. We will be going to see what happens in backend at the time of the setup process.
- Power ON Device for the first time. The device starts blinking a LED.
- The device has a Controller (ESP8266). The controller enables WiFi hotspot with unique SSID. The mobile application connects with a WiFi. The application gets device details likes device unique ID, device type, device manufacturer.
- The application verifies a device with IoT cloud. If the device verifies successfully. The device needs to have your WiFi credential for connecting to the Internet. The application provides WiFi SSID and password to Device.
- Restart the Device. After that device will connect to IoT cloud via WiFi router internet. The device is listed in the customer account.
- In case you change WiFi password then Device can’t able to connect with the internet. The device needs to be put in Master mode(Hotspot). Connect mobile application with this device locally. Update password in Device. The controller now able to connects with the internet.
- The controller must have memory to store WiFi details permanently, So when the device restarts device able to get this information.
