This is a lab that I have created for a Masters in Software and Data Science class at hte University of Saint Thomas. In this lab we will covered just a small slice of what is possible with an IoT device sending data to a cloud service. The focus in this lab is on data visualizing and free/low cost tools that allow us to explore and make interesting and useful projects.
The source code is free to use/reuse as you wish. It's largely based off of the tutorials and links which I will include below.
Typically, there are 3 ways in which data can be sent using the Particle Platform.
- C Library which you add to your code and uses HTTP/HTTPS
- MQTT library which you again add to your code, but does it over the MQTT protocol
- Particle Webhooks
Each has their own advantage and disadvantage.
In my lecture, I explain the differences, but to make things easy and free we use ThingSpeak for our data visualization. They offer free accounts to all and some interesting data additions for colleges and universities. Here are links to each tutorials for each method. I have also included example working source code files (.ino) in this repository that mocks out data or uses some basic sensors to send the data.