POLY

engineering for everyone

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Inspiration

Building connected electronics is... inconvenient. AI can help with software, but firmware and hardware remain in the middle ages. We created POLY to make the work to go from a simple idea to a functional system of devices (over the IoT) go from weeks or months to mere seconds. With POLY, the barrier of accessibility to actualize your ideas is gone. Your grandmother, your son, anyone with any level of experience can make a network of interconnected devices without even connecting a wire. That means any old remote cabin could become a Smart Home in seconds. Any intersection, a Smart City corner in minutes. A working robotic system is a few blocks (and a few clicks) away. You could prototype an invention of any kind that involves motors, sensors, etc. using POLY Blocks off-the-shelf.

What it does

POLY is a modular electronics product line and ecosystem that takes away the boring parts of building an idea. Using a central POLY Host, users can wirelessly control a suite of POLY Peripherals (sensors, motors, actuators, etc) through a simple Madlibs-esque web interface. No soldering, no flashing firmware, and no writing Embedded C. The blocks connect over WiFi with your webapp, and the backend handles the power management, networking, and communication protocols automatically.

The result is EVERYTHING happens in the backend. A customer (whether that be a mechanical engineer who wants to bring their electronics to life without an EE/CS degree, a homeowner who wants to make a smart home, a city planner who wants to make their smart city more connected, a grandmother who wants to detect birds at her birdfeeder using her smart home setup, or a sneaky child who wants to automatically hit a keyboard cap to swap their tab anytime their dad opens their bedroom door – which would be quite the smart home) would simply order a POLY Host and whatever peripheral POLY blocks they need, and immediately control and configure them from our website with incredibly simple and intuitive control using POLY Instruct on the website. Fully wirelessly. In a way, POLY blocks are almost as simple to build with as Lego, so it's also great for young learners!

How we built it

We utilized the ESP32-S3 for the POLY Host to manage heavy WiFi/MQTT traffic and the ESP32-C3 Super Mini for the peripherals due to its compact footprint and native ESP-NOW support. We then developed a tiered communication stack: MQTT for the cloud-to-host link and ESP-NOW for a low latency, peer-to-peer communication between the Host and Peripherals. The frontend is built with Next.js (deployed on Vercel), providing a control dashboard that talks to our MQTT broker (thanks test.mosquitto.org!) to trigger hardware actions instantly.

Challenges we ran into

IoT (Internet of Things) is surprisingly complicated. ACK signals, timing issues, packet loss, and pairing problems are surprisingly elusive, often turning simple communication into a debugging hell. Working with 3-4 MCUs at once is a challenge on its own, and we got to experience firsthand when dealing with the difficulties of electronics why POLY should exist!

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We were super excited when we successfully built a full-stack routing system where a website publishes MQTT commands to a specific topic, which is then wirelessly read by an ESP32 microcontroller over WiFi and routed wirelessly to other ESP32's.

What we learned

Install the ESP-IDF Serial Monitor extension! It makes keeping track of serials ports from all of our microcontrollers so much easier. Also: even the smallest of ESP microcontrollers, i.e. the ESP32 C3 Super Mini, are surprisingly useful. Richard in particular learned a good deal about IP, MAC addresses, and WPA security protocol.

What's next for POLY

Development into more nodes and peripherals, smaller and more compact form factors for all components, and better customizability on POLY Instruct. For instance, we plan to release the POLY Two S with camera and infrared capabilities by June. Internally, we also plan to design custom drivers, compact PCBs (with tons of test points), and improving performance that rivals modern alternatives.

Built With

  • c
  • c++
  • cjson
  • esp-idf
  • esp-now
  • esp-wifi
  • esp32
  • esp32c3supermini
  • esp32s3
  • espressif
  • freertos
  • i2c
  • mosquitto
  • mqtt
  • mqtt.js
  • react
  • typescript
  • vercel
  • vite
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