Connecting the controller to the WiFi network

Each controller must be connected to the smart home WiFi network. It is assumed that the necessary firmware is already installed on your controller. If you assembled the controller yourself, you can find out how to install the firmware on it in the documentation: Installing the firmware.

Connect the controller to the power supply. The blue LED of the controller will start blinking. The controller will try to find a WiFi network that it knows about. It will try to do this for three minutes. After that, if it fails to connect, the controller will go into emergency access point mode. It will now create its own WiFi network and wait for connections to it. In this mode, the LED will blink less frequently and less frequently.

You have an opportunity not to wait these three minutes for the controller to search for an old (or erroneous) WiFi network, but to immediately put it into setup mode. To do this, you need to turn off the controller and then press and hold RST (Reset), после чего to turn it on. Wait a few seconds and release the RST button. The controller will create its WiFi network.

Using a laptop or smartphone, search for new WiFi networks. The controller will work in emergency (or setup) mode creating its own access point, i.e. its own WiFi network with a name in the style of

SmartESP-ХХХХXXX

Connect to this network using the default password :

smartkey

After successfully connecting to the controller's WiFi network, its LED will flash twice as often. Now, open a browser on your laptop (or smartphone) and point to the special address:

http://192.168.51.1

Opening the page will require authorization, use the word as a username:

smart

Leave the password field blank!

After successful authorization, the page of Setup, section will open, where you will need to specify the following settings:

Wi-Fi access - parameters (name and password) of the controller connection to your WiFi network.
Host Name - controller name in the network (Latin characters).
Auth Password - access password to the controller.
Board Hotspot - parameters of emergency connection to the controller if it cannot find a WiFi network. By default, the current settings with which you connected to the controller will be displayed there. We strongly recommend changing them for security reasons!

Press the Save button and the controller will reboot, after which it will connect to the WiFi network. If it fails to do so, after a few minutes it will go back to the emergency access point mode with the parameters you specified earlier in section Board Hotspot. Подробнее ниже.

Board Hotspot (access point emergency mode)

Please note that in this access point mode the controller works only if it fails to connect to your WiFi network after being turned on. After one hour in this mode, the controller automatically reboots and tries to connect to your WiFi network again. Also, please note that if the controller was connected to your WiFi network but the connection was subsequently lost, the controller will try to reconnect all the time without going into the emergency mode of the access point and without rebooting.

Reboot the controller. The LED will blink slowly and then go out. This will mean that the WiFi network has been found and the controller has successfully connected to it! The controller is ready to work and the next step is to register it on the smart home server, which can be local or cloud-based.

Important! If you have lost all passwords and cannot connect to the controller in any mode (and there is no RST button), in this case you should use SmartESP controller programmer to re-install the firmware.

Note. If you are an experienced specialist, you can manage the controller settings through its web-interface. To do this, you will need to go to the web control panel of your home router and find the IP address of the controller there. For example, it can be an address like 192.168.88.37. Then you can manage the controller through your browser by opening this address as a web site : http://192.168.88.37.