Many Arduino-compatible boards can connect to the internet in some way, but in order to make them useful, we need something for them to communicate with. Fortunately, there’s a wide range of tools for you to use to make this easy. Here, we look through our eight favourite IoT back-ends that we can use to make our online Arduino projects really useful.
#1 on their list is Adafruit IO, Adafruit’s Internet of Things service.
Adafruit IO is an online service that allows you to store bits of data that come from, or should go to, your
internet-connected devices. It’s based around the concept of streams of data. Each stream is a sequence of bits of information that could be numbers, text, or other things. Each is associated with the time it’s added, so you can, for example, log the temperature as a stream of numbers representing the degrees Fahrenheit. On top of this, Adafruit IO has dashboards which each include widgets that can either read data from a stream and displaying (such as a line graph or gauge), or send data to a stream, such as a button you can click on and off.
There are libraries for Arduino and CircuitPython to help you send and receive data. The free plan lets you create ten feeds and five dashboards with data stored for 30 days, but if you upgrade to pro (for $10 per month), you get unlimited feeds and dashboards with data stored for 60 days.
Adafruit publishes a wide range of writing and video content, including interviews and reporting on the maker market and the wider technology world. Our standards page is intended as a guide to best practices that Adafruit uses, as well as an outline of the ethical standards Adafruit aspires to. While Adafruit is not an independent journalistic institution, Adafruit strives to be a fair, informative, and positive voice within the community – check it out here: adafruit.com/editorialstandards
Stop breadboarding and soldering – start making immediately! Adafruit’s Circuit Playground is jam-packed with LEDs, sensors, buttons, alligator clip pads and more. Build projects with Circuit Playground in a few minutes with the drag-and-drop MakeCode programming site, learn computer science using the CS Discoveries class on code.org, jump into CircuitPython to learn Python and hardware together, TinyGO, or even use the Arduino IDE. Circuit Playground Express is the newest and best Circuit Playground board, with support for CircuitPython, MakeCode, and Arduino. It has a powerful processor, 10 NeoPixels, mini speaker, InfraRed receive and transmit, two buttons, a switch, 14 alligator clip pads, and lots of sensors: capacitive touch, IR proximity, temperature, light, motion and sound. A whole wide world of electronics and coding is waiting for you, and it fits in the palm of your hand.
Have an amazing project to share? The Electronics Show and Tell is every Wednesday at 7pm ET! To join, head over to YouTube and check out the show’s live chat – we’ll post the link there.
