ESP8266 WebSocket with BlueHost - websocket

Question

Over the past 18 months I have successfully developed an air quality monitoring system that controls an air purifier in my home, I am also using the Blynk platform to monitor and control remotely. Now, I want to migrate this project over to my own website, I have my own website and using standard HTTP commands I now log all the data into a database and graph the data over time.
I want full bi-directional data transfer i.e log data from remote sensors to website and control air purifier settings from website to air purifier. It would appear that one way to do this is by using a webSocket, I have a shared hosting plan with BlueHost so I have now purchased a dedicated ip address and an opened port for both incoming and outgoing connections.
After many hours of trawling the internet and many forums I am struggling to find an example of how to implement this webSocket system. All the examples seem to be for local servers and I cannot find anything that shows what needs to be included in the website end to get a successful connection.
If anyone has any experience with webSockets and BlueHost I would appreciate your help.
Richard

Answer 1

It is relying on what language are you going to use for backend to implement websocket connection no matter what hosting you choosed.
If you want to use PHP, it is pretty straightforward because there is no specific overlay ontop of websocket protocol in this case unlike socketio for NodeJS and others. This example may help you to start which I found in 5 minutes of searching. If you are confused about websocket implementation at all it's a good idea to try websocket for web at first by simple example.
If you want to use NodeJS you may probably want to use existing library something like this.
In case of Java there is SockJS usually used out of the box as standard library for client. So you have to find or make something similar but for C++ if you have enough skills or try to configure simple websocket connection as for PHP.
I have used Firebase library for bidirectional communication with ESP8266, because it is pretty simple and free for small projects. The main benefit of this approach that you don't need to maintain your backend, it just works 24/7 since you've configured connection and business logic. Probably this is what are you looking for. Also you can host static pages on Firebase cloud as well if you need kind of admin interface. Heroku hosting is also free for tiny projects.

Answer 2

#mr.boris
Many thanks for your quick reply and help.
I have been using several examples like your first suggested example, the problem always is that I cannot get passed the "handshake" routine.
Arduino IDE serial monitor output
Connecting to XXXXXXXX
.
WiFi connected
IP address:
192.168.0.110
Connected
Waiting...
Waiting...
Waiting...
Waiting...
Waiting...
Waiting...
Waiting...
Handshake failed.
The port that BlueHost have opened is 1025 could this be the problem?
I have cut done the esp8266 program to the bare minimum
#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <WebSocketClient.h>
char* WEBSOCKET_PATH = "/webSocket_02.php";
char* WEBSOCKET_HOST = "xxx.com";
char* WIFI_SSID = "xxxxxxxxx";
char* WIFI_PASSWORD = "xxxxxxxxxx";
WebSocketClient webSocketClient;
WiFiClient client;
void setup() {
Serial.begin(115200);
delay(10);
Serial.println();
Serial.println();
Serial.print("Connecting to ");
Serial.println(WIFI_SSID);
WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA);
WiFi.begin(WIFI_SSID, WIFI_PASSWORD);
while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
delay(500);
Serial.print(".");
}
Serial.println("");
Serial.println("WiFi connected");
Serial.println("IP address: ");
Serial.println(WiFi.localIP());
delay(5000);
if (client.connect(WEBSOCKET_HOST,80)) {
Serial.println("Connected");
}
else {
Serial.println("Connection failed.");
}
webSocketClient.path = WEBSOCKET_PATH;
webSocketClient.host = WEBSOCKET_HOST;
if (webSocketClient.handshake(client)) {
Serial.println("Handshake successful");
}
else {
Serial.println("Handshake failed.");
}
}
void loop() {
}
The port number here is 80 (WEBSOCKET_HOST,80), if I change it to 1025 I get no result at all.