In today’s article I’m going to talk about ThingSpeak. Just
for the beginning just consider as ThingSpeak is a website which provides IoT
services. This article is great for electronic enthusiasts and university
students. If you are familiar with IoT you may know that setting up an IoT
server is somewhat difficult and you have to pay if you want to access data
outside the network.
When I did my final project at the university I did setup a MQTT
server to connect my devices. If you are interested in today’s topic just Google
the term MQTT if you are not familiar with it. I had to keep all my devices in
the same network when I did the demonstration. It was actually not a problem. Yet
the biggest problem was to collect data to prove the concept. My project was related
to GPS tracking therefore I had to carry my laptop turn on with me as the MQTT
server was my laptop. I had to create a mobile hotspot from my phone to keep
the devices on the same network. Somehow I manage to collect the data.
Then I heard about ThingSpeak. Some of its features are free
and those are more than enough to conduct a project. It is very easy to setup. You
can create a profile there for free. You can connect your first device within
few minutes. ThingSpeak is associated with Mathworks which is the maker of
MATLAB and Simulink. Electronics and engineering students are familiar with
MATLAB and Simulink. Those are software which are used for advance mathematical
calculations and modeling. You can analyze data and do simulations. Most of the
features in MATLAB are embedded in ThingSpeak. Therefore it is also a great
tool for data visualization.
As I mentioned earlier, once you have setup an account in
ThingSpeak, you can connect your IoT devices. It supports Arduino, Raspberry
Pi, ESP8266 and Particle Photon and Electron. Next best thing about ThingSpeak
you can take action according to the sensor readings. It has APIs for Mobile
and Web applications. You can setup a twitter account to automatically tweet
when needed. You can also send SMS using Twilio.
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| Screenshot of my ThingSpeak Channel Stats |
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