Last summer I was tinkering with the Adafruit huzzah esp8266 interfacing it with a wireless ceiling fan remote, my garage doors, and I even created a pool temperature monitor.
I decided to see if I could interface it with my car’s fob to activate it’s various functions. There was one in particular that was of interest to me, it being the remote start feature.
I was able to set up a raspberry pie 3 to run a node.js web server as the hub of the operation and program the ESP8266 modules to register with the node.js web server so that I only have to worry about setting up the raspberry with a static IP and the ESP’s can have dynamic IP’s so I don’t need to track their network configuration.
The ESP8266 nodes run a web server as well and when you hit specific urls they perform the programed functionality. I then added the maker channel from IFTTT.com so that I can hit these URL’s from their app on my phone.
After Google Assistant was added to IFTTT I integrated the custom voice commands to activate the maker channel applets that hit the urls. It works really well if. I also use the IFTTT scheduler channel to start my car automatically Monday – Friday at 8am so that my car is nice and toasty during cold winter mornings, and fresh and cool during muggy Georgia mornings.
I am sure the code could be improved if I invested more time but it works as intended so I am satisfied at the moment. I have simplified the server code so that it only contains the code required to interface with one ESP8266 module.
If there is interest in the project I will elaborate with detailed step by step instructions.
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