How to Connect Devices to iHost for Control and Management?

iHost HTTP-based API provides the open capabilities of iHost to any third-party application development as well as third-party devices and system integration. With these APIs, a wide range of applications can be realized to meet various feature expansion needs.

Developers can use iHost as a local server and develop other branded device integration applications via device registration and status synchronization APIs. Register your devices to iHost and the devices would be shown in iHost console. The real-time status of the device is synchronized to iHost via the two-way status synchronization interface, thus, the features of the real-time device status, triggering scene linkage, and device control can be realized on the center console of iHost.

In order to have a further understanding of the registration and device management APIs, we provide an open-source Add-on named “eWeLink Smart Home (Github) ” for your reference.

The concept of the eWeLink Smart Home Add-on is WiFi device synchronization into iHost. The eWeLink Smart Home Add-on searches for “eWeLink Support” devices in the LAN, connect devices through LAN mode, and synchronizes them into iHost for management, control, and automation through iHost. The workflow involves searching for “eWeLink Support” devices that support LAN mode through mDNS, obtaining the LAN communication encryption key of the device through the cloud, and determining if the device type is currently supported by iHost. If supported, the Add-on will display the “Sync” button for device synchronization with iHost.

When the user selects the “Sync”, eWeLink Smart Home Add-on will first call iHost’s permission API to apply for an API access token. After manually confirming the authorization on iHost as prompted, the Add-on can successfully obtain the token for subsequent communication with iHost. The Add-on will sync the selected devices to iHost through the device registration API, and you can see the device cards on the center console. Afterward, Add-on will synchronize the status changes from the device to iHost through the Device status synchronization API, it will also forward the control commands from iHost to the device through the Device reverse control API so that the user can view the status of the device in real-time, control the device and configure various automations in the iHost center console.

In the future, we will provide open-source “Web API to MQTT” Add-on demo to facilitate the connection of various devices that use MQTT interfaces. Currently, iHost supports only a limited number of device types with simple capabilities. However, iHost will continue to update and support more device types and complex device capabilities in the future.