ESP8266 Community Forum

Hi,

I recieved by ESP-01 today- flashed basic and managed to switch ON/OFF an led by connecting phone to ESP over wifi.

My question is how to do this over internet - 3g network.

Sorry if this been answered before - couldnt find it.

So to gain access to a device inside your home network from the internet... You must know or find out your home routers Public IP address. One way to do that is to open a web browser and go to www.whatismyip.com

you then need to take advantage of "Port Forwarding" or "NAT" (network address translation) which is inside your home router.

change the setting on your ESP module to have it connect to your home network.

Then get into the settings page of your home router. Look for NAT or Port Forwarding.
you then need to direct an incoming port of your choosing (like 8010) for example and direct it to the IP address of your ESP

Then from outside your home network (or from your smart phones browser when using the cell network, not your home wifi) direct your browser to the publicIP:8010 ie http://66.123.234.12:8010 and if you have the port forwarding set up correctly you should be connected to your ESP module inside your private home network.

depending on your ISP your public IP may change from time to time so if it stops working then your public IP may have changed.

there are app's that you can put on a PC at home and it will email you when your public IP changes.

Just google something like "public IP change send email" or something like that.



dwight

Many thanks for the reply.
I will try it out.

One more query - how does a device like belkin wemo work. U dont have to set any port forwarding yet u can control it remotely.

Devices like Belkin uses proprietary cloud service providers and are subscription based.

The device once connected to the network dials home putting you at the whim of the provides cloud services.