Internet of Things for non-programmers with Arduino, Blynk and ESP8266-12F

The answer is NO — you don’t need to be a programmer to build Internet of Things (IoT) automation projects!

I get asked all the time: “What exactly is the Internet of Things, and can I create IoT projects without knowing how to code?”
In this article, I’ll show you how to control devices from your smartphone using the ESP8266 WiFi module and the Blynk platform, without writing a single line of code.

There are so many people who want to bring smart features to everyday objects — and honestly, it makes sense. People love to control things, especially remotely.

I personally know at least five experienced electronics engineers over 40 who are incredibly skilled in hardware but have almost no programming background. Some never had the opportunity to learn, while others simply aren’t interested — and that’s totally fine. What matters is that all of them are very excited about the idea of controlling devices over the internet.

And it’s not just engineers — even friends who’ve never touched a resistor are now curious about remote monitoring, automation, and control. IoT is no longer just for coders — it’s for everyone.

How to build Internet of Things projects with Blynk, Arduino and ESP8266 having Zero programming skills

Project goal

This is a 30 minutes project (considering you have all parts), and should give us the possibility to control 5 individual channels remotely with a smartphone from anywhere in the world, without writing a single line of code.

Project overview – requirements and skills

Skill level required (0 – 5):

• Electronics – 2
• Programming – 0
• Networking / Communication – 2
• Android – 1

In order to make this IoT project you will need the following parts:

Hardware:

• 1 ESP8266 Esp12 ($$)
• ESP Programmer (any method, read here more)
• 5 LEDs ($$)
• 5 Resistors ($$)
• 1 x Breadboard ($$)
• 1 x Breadboard power supply ($$)
• Wires (dupont $$)
• 1 Smartphone (with internet available)

Software:

• WiFi network with internet available
• Arduino IDE 1.6+ (download from here)
• Blynk library for Arduino (download from here)
• Blynk Application for Smartphone (IOS Android)

In the below image you can see the wiring sketch, probably a rudimentary setup for most of you, but hopefully simple enough for non technical people.

The WiFi Controller – ESP8266 ESP12F – quick overview

The controller device used (ESP-12F) is probably the best WiFi Arduino compatible module for Internet of Things projects, available on the market considering the price of ~5$. If you already played with an ESP-01 module, the uploading firmware process is exactly the same, you can easily upload you sketches using one of the many methods available.

If this is your first IoT project, you definitely need to read this ESP8266 Arduino Tutorial to have a better understanding about the flow.

At this moment, almost all WiFi ready development boards based on NodeMCU are based on ESP12 because of its huge power for such a low price. The ESP12 series features 9 to 11 digital GPIOs ready to send both logical or PWM signal, dedicated ports for I2C and UART, a 32bit MCU and a complete set of WiFi capabilities. The ESP8266 12 Series can be programmed by LUA, Arduino, Python or directly via AT commands. Sleep modes and low power consumption made this little board one of the most complete WiFi solution for Internet of Things projects. The module needs to be powered with 3.3V and the highest spike in data transmission goes up to 250mAh drain.

Selection with best offers and discounts that I found on Amazon

• ESP8266 Model 12, Series E
• ESP8266 Model 12, Series F
• ESP8266 Model 14, Series E
• ESP8266 NodeMCU Development Board

The only downside is that if you buy it as standalone, it doesn’t come with a standard pin-out format, you need to either improvise some welding or just buy a very cheap dedicated adapter board ready for prototyping (see price on Amazon).

The Blynk Framework – IoT Platform for non-programmers – quick overview

Blynk is an amazing drag-and-drop IoT app builder designed for development boards like Arduino, ESP8266, Raspberry Pi, SparkFun, and many others. This powerful app — available on both Android and iOS — lets you create a custom digital dashboard by simply dragging and dropping widgets that communicate directly with your hardware.

Installing the app is easy, and getting started is free for entry-level projects. Each widget you add uses a certain amount of “energy”, and your available energy determines how many controls you can place on your dashboard.

Need more widgets? You can buy extra energy within the app — and the good news is, it’s very affordable.

The working principle is similar to a chat application. Both the development board and the Blynk mobile app connect to a central Blynk server (usually the cloud). Using a unique authentication token, they open a secure communication channel that allows them to “talk” to each other using a push/socket system.

This setup means the connection is bidirectional and asynchronous — exactly what we need for building interactive, real-time IoT projects.

The even better news? If you’re working on larger projects or require high reliability and uptime, Blynk gives you the option to host your own private server instead of relying on the free public cloud. Files and documentation can be found on the official Blynk website where you can also find a nice community.

STEP 1 – Loading the Blynk Sketch into the ESP8266 board

In order to take your development board into the game, in our case the ESP8266 ESP12F, we need to download the Blynk library for Arduino and load a standalone simple Blynk sketch into it. To do that, open the Arduino IDE, go to the Sketch menu and open the Library manager. Once opened you can search the library by the Blynk keyword and install it.

After you installed the Blynk library, Its recommended to restart your Arduino IDE. Allot of Arduino Blynk examples should be available now under Examples menu as in the image below. Open the Blynk ESP8266_Standalone example:

As I promise you, despite this sketch contains Arduino code, we will not change anything but use it as it comes. The only things that we need to update, are the Authorization Token and your router WiFi credentials. The authorization token can be obtained once you install the Blynk app on your smartphone as you will see in the next steps.

After you completed the proper Authorization Token and the WiFi credentials, make sure you have selected the proper board, the Generic ESP8266 Module in my case, and your module is now in DOWNLOAD Mode. Usually all ESP8266 boards can be booted in DOWNLOAD mode by pulling the GPIO 0 to LOW while reseting.

Open your Serial Monitor, hit the upload button, and if everything goes fine, you should see a message like in the next image.

STEP 2 – Setup the Blynk App on your smartphone

In order to install the Blynk app on your smartphone, go to the Play / Market app and search for Blynk, the original app with the green icon should pop the first in the search results. Install it, open it, and login. I used my Facebook account to login, the only thing important is to have a valid email in order to receive the Authorization Token.

If you have logged on, you should now be able to create a new project by pressing the obvious button. After setting up the project name, the app will request to select your hardware, and here you should point to whatever development board you have (in my case the ESP8266).

Another important setting is the connection type. This application covers not only the WiFi boards, but it can manage the USB, GSM or Ethernet too, which is incredible. Select your connection type, in my case the WiFi protocol.

After setting up the introduction steps, you should have an empty dashboard as in the below left screenshot. The first thing you need to do is to get into the project settings in order to receive the Authorization token. You can easily send it by email or copy to clipboard. Get it and paste it into the Arduino sketch as I told you in the first steps.

Once you uploaded the sketch into your development board with the proper Authorization Token, you can now start dragging widgets from the Widget Box. You can see in the widget list also information about your remaining energy balance, and also access more by pressing the Add button. In the list, every widget as a short description in the right, but in order to get more information you should check the documentation on the blynk official website. In order to keep this project simple we will start with a button. Drag a Button widget on your dashboard and then click it in order to configure.

The most important setting is to choose the PIN you want to control with that button. For this example we will select the GPIO5 pin from the ESP8266 – ESP12F which is also PWM. You have also the possibility to make it a PUSH Button or a SWITCH. Being a PWM GPIO we are able to scale the values on both states.

After setting up the Button just come back to the dashboard editor screen and you should see it as in the below left image. Now we need to be sure that we powered up our development board and it is in the normal BOOT mode (depending on your device). Once we did that, just hit the little green play button and your project will start running. After that, by pressing the chip like button, you will see if your device is online. If everything is correctly done, you should see exactly like in the images below. Now you can control your GPIO5 by pressing the dashboard button from whatever place in the world.

Once you’ve done your first widget functional, just repeat the process for every available GPIO that you want to control. Off course, as I told you, this is pretty rudimentary, the Blynk framework can do much complex tasks, but I will cover that in next articles. Also, if you want to build more complex projects with Blynk, like reading sensors or making graphs and bridges you will need to do some programming.

Conclusion

In my opinion you, at this moment, you won’t be able to make truly customized IoT projects without being able to at least understand a bit of Arduino / C++ code, or have an algorithmic sense of thinking. But, I am 100% convinced that in the future low level programming will remain only for experts, and friendly frameworks will take the lead, as they already did in biggest companies. The compromise between programming from scratch and building with frameworks will be always the price. Frameworks need people to support and update them and that is expensive. If you want to develop a home automation in short time using benefits of IoT, the Blynk platform is just perfect, I can recommend it without blinking :).

Hoping that this article inspired you, i kindly invite you share this article,  subscribe my YouTube channel and join the communities on social networks. Please feel free to comment or send suggestions / remarks so i can improve the content quality!

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