The PowerHome ThingSpeak controller is very much like the ThingSpeak IOT controller except that the ThingSpeak "cloud" is within PowerHome itself. This controller implements the same HTTP API that the ThingSpeak IOT controller uses but all communication is done directly with PowerHome. This works very well if you are accessing and working with devices within your control so you can configure them to speak to the PowerHome ThingSpeak controller vs the actual ThingSpeak IOT cloud server.
Setup is done nearly the same except you'll define the webserver port your PowerHome ThingSpeak controller will use vs the ThingSpeak IOT cloud API URL. You still have the ability to declare up to 4 channels with Read and Write keys (you'll make these values up yourself). Instead of being limited to only 8 devices per channel, the PowerHome ThingSpeak controller allows you to have up to 256 devices per channel. In the "Settings" window in the Controller setup screen, you'll also have the ability to make the PowerHome ThingSpeak controller secure by checking the Secure box and providing a path/filename to a certificate file.
Configuring your PowerHome ThingSpeak "devices" is done in the Analog IO screen with device types of IOT Input, IOT Output, IOT Input (Calc), or IOT Output (Calc), the same as you would with the ThingSpeak IOT controller. Input device types only work with a single channel/device for both read and write operations while Output device types can have separate channel/device configurations for read and write operations.
When configuring your devices in the Analog IO screen, you'll enter the channel ID in the "ROM ID / IP / Topic / Channel" column. For Input devices and Output devices reading and writing to the same channel/device, set the Unit column to 0 and the Point column to the device number (1 thru 256 for the PowerHome ThingSpeak controller). If your Output device updates a channel/device (within the same controller) different from the read operation, enter the update channel ID in the "P Topic / O Channel" column and the update device number in the Unit column (1 thru 256). There is no need for "Poll Intervals" for either Input or Output devices since the data is already contained within the PowerHome controller.