Learning IoT: Basic Experiments of Home Automation using ESP8266, Arduino and XBee

Extensive implementation of Internet-of-Things (IoT) systems increases the needs of IoT engineers. However, some available IoT-trainer modules, which needed to equipped engineers with IoT skills, are quite expensive and exclusive for private institutions. This research proposes an IoT-trainer design that offers seven simple experiments to understand IoT concepts, which classified into three aspects: IoT devices, connectivity, and cloud or application system. All devices are available and purchasable from the market, low-price, and easy to configure: ESP8266 (NodeMCU-12E, and ESP-01), Arduino Uno, and Xbee. Moreover, the platforms that we use to tunnel a network and processing data are also open source: Ngrok, ThingSpeak, and 000webhost. By exploiting this simple, inexpensive IoT-trainer design and experimenting with those seven scenarios, learners can study the basic concept of IoT as infrastructure.