What good is ioBroker for me?
IoBroker is an open source free software for bringing different smart home devices (IoTs) together into a complete system (Smart Home System). These devices work on their own, but this gives us a complex control panel with a graphical interface that can be accessed on the local network with a web browser.
Installing ioBroker is not complicated.
IoBroker is made up of modules called adapters. Smart devices connect ioBroker with adapters. The adapters you need can be installed with one click and used after a quick setup.
IoBroker can be installed on a SoC single-card computer (RaspberryPI, OrangePI, etc.) or on a desktop PC running Windows, Linux. I recommend using Linux, I tried on Windows with little success. A good solution is to install the operating system on a RaspberryPi 4 USB HDD or SSD. On my old PC it runs perfectly under Debian 10.
With JavaScript we can create automation processes, connect adapters, etc. This allows you to create custom control processes. There is also Blocky, Node-red or Scenes for this purpose.
One of the most important adapters is MQTT. If you want to make your own tool, this is a must. MQTT enables low-resource two-way communication, so the MQTT protocol is a good option for data exchange between a server and a microcontroller.
Here you can find some examples of ESP8266, ESP32 microcontrollers
The VIS is a tool for the visual display of data. On a local network, you can edit and display data from ioBroker in a browser, set controls and switches.
Want to control your devices with voice commands? No problem. The IoT adapter allows you to communicate with Google Home and / or Amazon Alexa. To do this, you need to install the GoogleHome and / or Alexa adapter.
With the help of an Alexa adapter, even written text can be read, for example, on AmazonEcho