Parts

Packaging

Delivered from Amazon and Flikto Elektronik.

Microcontroller

Adafruit FTDI Friend is a USB to serial port FTDI adapter, which has 4 signal lines, a RTS line for programming/flashing firmware and a DTR line.

Adafruit HUZZAH ESP8266 breakout is a WiFi microcontroller with a ESP8266 processor from Espressif.

Sensors

The TSL2561 luminosity sensor is an advanced digital light sensor.

Breakout board with the SHT31-D and some supporting circuitry with Sensiron Temperature/Humidity sensors.

Breadboard

Half-sized Neuftech 400 Kontakte Breadboard

Assembly

Soldering

Wiring

Running Prototype

Used Software

Programming

Programming with the Arduino IDE which writes directly to the firmware and erasing the pre-programmed NodeMCU's Lua interpretter firmware.

Desktop Client

MQTT.fx is a MQTT Client written in Java based on Eclipse Paho.

Middleware

MQTT is a machine-to-machine (M2M)/"Internet of Things" connectivity protocol.

Mosquitto is an open source (EPL/EDL licensed) message broker that implements the MQTT protocol versions 3.1 and 3.1.1.

The Hypriot Cluster Lab allows to create a Raspberry Pi Docker Swarm Cluster very easily.

Conclusion

Awesome introduction into IoT with support from my little daughter Maya. Ranging from gathering facts and parts, buying stuff, putting it together and taking it apart, soldering, wiring and choosing and setup of my software stack.