In Chapter 5, Example - Soil Humidity Monitor with Wi-Fi, we looked at developing firmware for the ESP8266 MCU to complement a soil humidity sensor and pump, to ensure that a connected plant would be provided with sufficient water from the water tank.
As we noted in that chapter, the firmware used is highly modular and has the highly flexible MQTT-based interface so that it can be used for a wide variety of modules. This chapter covers the system in which the firmware originated: Building Management and Control (BMaC), originally developed just to monitor rooms for their temperature, humidity, and CO2 levels, but later expanded to keep tabs on coffee machines and meeting room occupancy, and ultimately to control the air-conditioning throughout the building.
The BMaC project's current development status can be found at the author's GitHub account at https://github.com/MayaPosch/BMaC. The version we are covering here is as it exists at this point, with us covering how this system came to be and what it looks like today, and why.