Events

Thanks all. I have pretty much written off the 8266 for this effort namely Google Local home. Maybe the esp32 with WiFi but I'm thinking a Pi is in my future. I'll probably convert the existing 8266 Arduino IDE code to use MQTT just to be able to use the AWS or Azure IoT hubs. It looks like the webhook triggers there will mesh nicely with the existing webhook backend. BTW, the HTTPS issue was the final straw. Unfortunately my test back end has both HTTP and HTTPS enabled so I missed that.

"...The terms our backend, We pretend, FIFO, ...this is all a site that is available for all the registered HW control devices to pull from? Neat solution..."

The site is where all of the devices pickup requests. We have incorporated OTA, we can remotely reboot the device and get various status information. Given the way the 8266 handles certificates (or doesn't) we can push a new fingerprint to the device if necessary. There are also two middle-ware pieces, one each for Google and Alexa. Alexa requires an AWS lambda program for Smart Home. Google is any web endpoint will do. Everything is C#. Web sites are .Net Core. Everything is secured with JWT. Both of the middleware components handle "turnOn", "discovery/SYNC" and "QUERY" requests from Alexa/Google in conjunction with the web back end. We wrote our own lightweight oAuth server.

"...To make things simple, I would quench older - not picked up messages - on the server level rather than in the client level... messages arrived on the hub and not picked up within threshold just 'evaporate' connection is not present (goes absent for too long, no long poll request is waiting or showing up)...." Not a bad idea and easily enough implemented. I may incorporate that in the next build. I'll try and remember to give you attribution.

In all this is a very rewarding project. You don't often have opportunities like this that really have such positive impact on these people's quality of life.