Last summer I was tinkering with the Adafruit huzzah ESP8266 interfacing it with a wireless ceiling fan remote, my garage doors, and I even created a pool temperature monitor.

I decided to see if I could interface it with my car's fob to activate it's various functions. There was one in particular that was of interest to me, it being the remote start feature.

I was able to set up a raspberry pie 3 to run a node.js web server as the hub of the operation and program the ESP8266 modules to register with the node.js web server so that I only have to worry about setting up the raspberry with a static IP and the ESP's can have dynamic IP's so I don't need to track their network configuration.

The ESP8266 nodes run a web server as well and when you hit specific urls they perform the programed functionality. I then added the maker channel from IFTTT.com so that I can hit these URL's from their app on my phone.

After Google Assistant was added to IFTTT I integrated the custom voice commands to activate the maker channel applets that hit the urls. It works really well if. I also use the IFTTT scheduler channel to start my car automatically Monday - Friday at 8am so that my car is nice and toasty during cold winter mornings, and fresh and cool during muggy Georgia mornings.

I am sure the code could be improved if I invested more time but it works as intended so I am satisfied at the moment. I have simplified the server code so that it only contains the code required to interface with one ESP8266 module.

If there is interest in the project I will elaborate with detailed step by step instructions.

Google assistant starts my car demonstration.

When I first set it up I was hitting the URL on the ESP8266 directly for testing using a Cron job to activate the remote start. I later added the Raspberry and here is that demonstration.