First off, here is the latest State of IO post from Todd:
We added support for AWS v4 inspired request signing to IO’s v2 REST API this week. This change should allow devices that don’t support TLS/SSL to communicate with Adafruit IO without sending their AIO Key in the clear. Because the requests are signed using a HMAC, users also will be able to ensure that their requests were not manipulated by things like man-in-the-middle attacks. This change will also reduce the risk of replay attacks by including a timestamp in the signature, so the request will only be valid within a 15 minute window.
We are considering requiring signed requests for any API v2 requests that don’t use a TLS/SSL connection. If you think this is a bad idea, please let us know in the forums. We will be updating the Adafruit IO client libraries this week to support the new request signatures.
Here are the stats for the past week:
* 27.4 million inserts of logged data in the last 7 days
* 9,744 users
* 7,537 online feeds (20,474 feeds total)
* ~50 inserts per second via MQTT
* ~5 inserts per second via REST API
Inserts per second seem to be holding steady, despite the increase in online feeds. We are going to add another queue worker and monitor the inserts per second to see if that fixes the bottleneck.
My favorite AIO project this week comes to us from our very own Tony DiCola. Tony shows us how to make our very own smart toilet light:
The smart toilet light project brings IoT to your bathroom. IoT, or Internet of Toilets, is the popular industry buzzword to describe a connected social network of intelligent toilets. With the smart toilet light you can create a light that illuminates your toilet bowl based on data from the internet. For example your toilet can shine red if it’s going to rain, or glow yellow if it’s sunny and clear outside. Not only is the smart toilet light a useful aid to find the toilet in the dark, but it’s a real source of information to help you plan for your day!
This project is built with a Feather Huzzah ESP8266 WiFi microcontroller and a 8mm NeoPixel LED. You can 3D print a case and a LED clip to hold the hardware near the toilet bowl. By connecting to Adafruit IO the ESP8266 can listen for color and animation commands that are sent from other services like If This Then That (IFTTT), Zapier, and more. You’ll have your toilet pulsing and flashing different colors from the internet in almost no time!
Here at Adafruit, we sell all of these amazing components, but we couldn’t find a good way to interact with them over the internet. There are certainly a lot of great services out there for datalogging, or communicating with your microcontroller over the web, but these services are either too complicated to get started, or they aren’t particularly fun to use. So, we decided to experiment with our own system, and that is how Adafruit IO got started.
To start, please visit https://io.adafruit.com, and take a look around. You can also visit our comprehensive tutorial located on the Adafruit Learning System.
We also have a blog/changelog specifically for Adafruit IO to keep you updated with the latest changes.
To make it easy for people to get started using Arduino or ESP8266 we have starter packs with just about everything you may want to connect to the internet, with known-working WiFi modules!
ESP8266 Huzzah Kit
