ESP8266 + DHT11 AWS IOT Thing not updating thing shadow - was working before

Question

I was able to get this working - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hpro1olRK0 - send an SMS and email of temperature and humidity data from AWS IOT using esp8266 + dht11 but all of a sudden it stopped updating the shadow.

Here is the code

#include <ESP8266WiFi.h>
#include <DHT11.h>
#include <AmazonIOTClient.h>
#include <ESP8266AWSImplementations.h>
Esp8266HttpClient httpClient;
Esp8266DateTimeProvider dateTimeProvider;
AmazonIOTClient iotClient;
ActionError actionError;
const char* ssid = "";
const char* password = "";
// Pin 2 will be used to read sensor data
int pin = 2;
// Initializing the sensor
DHT11 dht11(pin);
//Function to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit
double Fahrenheit(double celsius) {
 return ((celsius * 9 / 5) + 32);
}
void setup() {
 Serial.begin(115200);
 delay(10);
 Serial.println();
 // Connecting to Wi-Fi
 WiFi.mode(WIFI_STA);
 Serial.println();
 Serial.println();
 Serial.println("Connecting to ");
 Serial.println(ssid);
 WiFi.begin(ssid, password);
 while (WiFi.status() != WL_CONNECTED) {
 delay(500);
 Serial.print(".");
 }
 Serial.println("");
 Serial.println("WiFi connected");
 iotClient.setAWSRegion("us-west-2");
 iotClient.setAWSEndpoint("amazonaws.com");
 iotClient.setAWSDomain("al1x5kb4rzh0x.iot.us-west-2.amazonaws.com");
 iotClient.setAWSPath("$aws/things/esp8266/shadow/update/accepted");
 iotClient.setAWSKeyID("AKIAJJQ6ASLIDIPBE4PQ");
 iotClient.setAWSSecretKey("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");
 iotClient.setHttpClient(&httpClient);
 iotClient.setDateTimeProvider(&dateTimeProvider);
}
void loop() {
 int err;
 float temp, humi;
//Reading the sensor data
 if ((err = dht11.read(humi, temp)) == 0) {
 Serial.print(" temperature:");
 Serial.print(temp);
 Serial.print(" humidity:");
 Serial.print(humi);
 Serial.println();
 } else {
 Serial.println();
 Serial.print(" Error No :");
 Serial.print(err);
 Serial.println();
 }
// Converting the float data to char arrays
 char sTemp[10], sHumi[10];
 dtostrf(humi, 6, 2, sHumi);
 dtostrf(temp, 6, 2, sTemp);
// Creating the thing shadow to be sent to aws iot
 char shadow[100];
 strcpy(shadow, "{\"state\":{\"reported\": {\"Humidity\":");
 strcat(shadow, sHumi);
 strcat(shadow, ", \"Temperature\":");
 strcat(shadow, sTemp);
 strcat(shadow, "}}}");
 Serial.print(shadow);
 char* result = iotClient.update_shadow(shadow, actionError);
 Serial.print(result);
 delay(60000);
}

Output as expected

Connecting to 
NETGEAR53
.........
WiFi connected
 temperature:31.00 humidity:32.00
{"state":{"reported": {"Humidity": 32.00, "Temperature": 31.00}}}al1x5kb4rzh0x.iot.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
443
POST $aws/things/esp8266/shadow/update/accepted HTTP/1.1
Content-Type: application/json
Connection: close
Content-Length: 65
Host: al1x5kb4rzh0x.iot.us-west-2.amazonaws.com
x-amz-content-sha256: 923ed1ae613a9e14b45e4d080b092daf5cf61118041dc5225956299d5b0f8d49
x-amz-date: 20180323T034259Z
Authorization: AWS4-HMAC-SHA256 Credential=AKIAJJQ6ASLIDIPBE4PQ/20180323/us-west-2/iotdata/aws4_request,SignedHeaders=content-type;host;x-amz-content-sha256;x-amz-date,Signature=a10f0969043e609743412478567c10290b8c000185f2824e4a9cf07bb96cf279
{"state":{"reported": {"Humidity": 32.00, "Temperature": 31.00}}}

• Susindran Srinivasan: #include <ESP8266WiFi.h> #include <DHT11.h> #include <AmazonIOTClient.h> #include <ESP8266AWSImplementations.h> Esp8266HttpClient httpClient; Esp8266DateTimeProvider dateTimeProvider; AmazonIOTClient iotClient; ActionError actionError
• Susindran Srinivasan: A small correction on the output, sometimes its perfect but some other times i get timeout receiving time server data {"state":{"reported": {"Humidity": 41.00, "Temperature": 31.00}}}al1x5kb4rzh0x.iot.us-west-2.amazonaws.com 443 POST /things/ESP/shadow HTTP/1.1 ------------------------ {"state":{"reported": {"Humidity": 41.00, "Temperature": 31.00}}}timeout receiving timeserver data
• Soumen Nayak: I am also facing the same problem and still, I didn't get any answer...current I am also working on that
• David Glass: Anyone get this solved? I have the same issue
• Susindran Srinivasan: I am planning to try cleaning the AWSiot libraries, that worked last time but again only one device works for me as of now. Probably I might try a different set of code. Please share your code guys -- I will try to help. Also I am trying different AWS keys.

Answer 1

I was facing a similar problem: trying to update a thing's shadow on AWS IoT with no success. After some research, I found out that I was using an outdated library. In this question they advise to use heskew's aws-sdk-arduino, on iot-get-shadow-and-cleanup branch:

https://github.com/heskew/aws-sdk-arduino/tree/iot-get-shadow-and-cleanup.

Additionally, I think you have a little error on your code. As far as I know, AWSPath, it should look like:

iotClient.setAWSPath("/things/esp8266/shadow");

At least that works for me, and they use it this way on this video.

That's all I can tell... I am learning at this moment as well. Hope it helps!!

• Susindran Srinivasan: Thank you so much for your response, really appreciate it. My thing name is actually ESP so i have it set as ---iotClient.setAWSPath("/things/ESP/shadow");--- or should it only be esp8266? i deleted old libraries and used the one above but still my thing shadow is not updating. Please help. The other example video you referred - that also is not working
• Susindran Srinivasan: arduino.stackexchange.com/questions/51059/…

Answer 2

Just Change the Aws topic : it should be $aws/things/esp8266/shadow/update

and you have to add the certificate path also