IoT Parrot
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Getting started

Go from a fresh sign-up to a working dashboard that controls real hardware — in about five minutes. This walkthrough covers the whole path: account, broker, device, dashboard, and control.

devicesSet up on the web, control anywhere

You do the setup — brokers, devices, dashboards — in the web app at app.iotparrot.com. Once a dashboard exists, you can view and control it from the web or the iOS/Android companion apps, and everything stays in sync across all three. Keep that split in mind as you follow the steps below: the building happens on the web.

On this page

Before you begin

You'll get the most out of this walkthrough if you have:

  • An MQTT-capable device — an ESP32, ESP8266, Arduino with a network shield, Raspberry Pi, or anything that can speak MQTT. It doesn't have to be flashed and ready yet; you can set up the IoT Parrot side first and wire up firmware afterward.
  • A broker for that device to connect to. If you don't already run one, use the IoT Parrot managed broker — there's nothing to install and it's included on every tier.
lightbulbNew to MQTT?

If terms like broker, topic, and payload are unfamiliar, read the short MQTT basics primer first. It explains the handful of concepts everything below builds on, and the rest of these steps will make a lot more sense.

1. Create an account

Open app.iotparrot.com and sign up. You can use:

  • Email and password
  • Continue with Google
  • Continue with Apple

The Free tier needs no payment information — you can build a real, working setup without entering a card. Free includes 1 broker, 3 devices, and 3 dashboards, which is plenty to complete this walkthrough. You can upgrade later if you outgrow those limits; see Account & billing.

2. Connect a broker

A broker is the MQTT server your device and IoT Parrot both connect to; it relays messages between them. From the web app, add your first broker. You have two choices:

  • IoT Parrot managed broker — zero setup. We host it for you, it's TLS-only, and each managed device you create gets its own credentials. Pick this if you don't already run a broker.
  • Bring your own MQTT broker — supply the host, port, path, and credentials of a broker you already run (for example Mosquitto, EMQX, or HiveMQ). Because the web app connects over WebSocket, a self-hosted broker must expose a WebSocket listener with a valid TLS certificate.

On the Free tier you get 1 broker. See Brokers for the full field-by-field setup of both options.

3. Add a device

A device in IoT Parrot is a named MQTT endpoint on a broker, along with the list of topics it uses. It's a pure data source — the controls that drive it live on a dashboard, not on the device itself.

Create a device, give it a name (e.g. Greenhouse controller), pick the broker you just added, and list its topics. For example a greenhouse controller might use:

home/greenhouse/fan
home/greenhouse/temp
home/greenhouse/pump

The Free tier allows 3 devices. If you chose the managed broker, adding a managed device also shows a copy-paste ESP32 firmware snippet preloaded with that device's TLS credentials. Full details are in Devices.

4. Build a dashboard

A dashboard is where you actually control your hardware. Open the drag-and-drop builder in the web app, then drop widgets onto the canvas and bind each one to a topic on your device:

  • A Toggle bound to home/greenhouse/fan that publishes ON / OFF.
  • A Gauge bound to home/greenhouse/temp that shows the live temperature.
  • A Button bound to home/greenhouse/pump that publishes PRESS to run the pump.

Save the dashboard when you're happy with it. The Free tier allows 3 dashboards. The full widget catalog — toggles, sliders, gauges, buttons, text inputs, and more — is documented in Dashboards & widgets.

5. Control your device

With the dashboard saved and your device online and subscribed to the right topics, you're live. Tap a toggle and the fan turns on; watch the gauge track the temperature as your firmware publishes it.

You can drive that same dashboard from the web app or the mobile companion app on iOS and Android — changes sync across all your signed-in devices in real time. This is the payoff of the web-vs-mobile split: you built everything once on the web, and now you can control it from anywhere.

boltNothing happening?

If a widget doesn't seem to do anything, double-check that the topic on the widget exactly matches the topic your firmware publishes or subscribes to, and that the device is connected to the same broker. The Troubleshooting page walks through the most common causes.

6. Go further

Once the basics work, layer on automation and monitoring:

  • Schedules Hobby+ — publish payloads on a cron schedule or a one-shot timer (run the pump every morning at 6am).
  • Alerts Maker+ — get push and email notifications when a topic matches a condition or a device goes quiet.
  • NFC automations Maker+ — tap your phone to an NFC tag to fire a sequence of MQTT actions.
  • Sharing Hobby+ — give household members access to a specific dashboard.

See Account & billing for how the tiers compare and which features each one unlocks.

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