Start building a control device

Prepare a Realer control-device project, get credentials, and use the linked reference pages to implement firmware.

A control device uses one runtime transport assigned to its Realer record: HTTPS polling or MQTT broker messaging.

Before you start

A production control device needs enough local engineering to behave safely when cloud communication fails or returns an application-level rejection.

  • Hardware
    Use an electronics device capable of connecting to the Internet, such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, STM32, ESP32, or another board suited to the physical system.
  • Credentials
    Get API keys for the Realer control-device record, then keep the client_id and client_secret secure. They identify the device at the OAuth token endpoint.
  • Firmware or software engineering
    Developing control devices requires firmware or software engineering ability. You can write the code yourself or use AI-assisted development tools, but the final firmware still needs technical validation for hardware behavior, credentials, network failures, and safe fallback logic.

Build path

  1. Prepare hardware and API keys
    Prepare the control-device hardware, verify that it can connect to the Internet, then create or select its Realer control-device record and keep that record's API keys available for firmware provisioning.
  2. Authenticate the device
    Start with OAuth 2.0 Client Credentials Grant. The returned Bearer access token authorizes protected HTTPS bootstrap requests.
  3. Confirm the runtime transport
    Use the control device runtime page to understand the HTTPS or MQTT path assigned to the control-device record, then follow the matching flow page.
  4. Implement the device contract
    Use catalog, feed-data, response-code, and field semantics references for stable firmware behavior.

Runtime entrypoints

Use the HTTPS flow for runtime requests at https://api.therealer.com/iot/v1/...; HTTPS polling firmware keeps using the Bearer token for catalog and feed-data requests. Use the MQTT flow to read the MQTT catalog, discover the broker URL, topics, and credential request data, then request the short-lived CONNECT tuple.