AVNET's iotconnect.io cloud platform is an online service that you can use to send data to, and then show it on a dashboard*. In this blog series I'm learning how to talk to it with Node-RED. In this post: what do I want to achieve, and what will I need to get there?
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Goal
I want to learn iotcloud.io, send data to it and make it available online.
- send measurements from my local device to iotconnect.io cloud, and
- show them on a dashboard that is accessible from the internet
- with Node-RED
- learn how easy or hard it is with AVNET's services.
Both sides: exchanging data with the cloud, building a dashboard on the cloud. - learn security options, again for both sides.
Infrastructure needed
To try this out, the requirements are humble:
- A device that runs Node-RED and can connect to the internet.
That can be a Pi, a BBB, you Windows Laptop, etc...
- An iotconnect.io account. Evaluation accounts are available.
You can generate one with the IotConnect app for Android or iPhone.
- A browser with access to your Node-RED service and to the internet.
* I vastly abstracted the services that iotconnect.io offers, so I can focus on the goal of my exercise. Check AVNET's product page for a full view.
I am using Node-RED because that is what I want to learn. There are SDKs for Python, C/C#, Java, Node.js, iOS/Android apps,
AVNET's cloud service does not have a free tier. Evaluation accounts are available for free. They are tied to an email address and valid for 30 days. This is useful for evaluation and playing along. But do not build something on the cloud side that you want to revisit after that period. |
Activities
I want to break the story into short focused posts. One thing at a time.
This is new to me and I like to document the steps while I'm going through the itinerary (all done now).
- I'll make an evaluation account. (done)
- Register a device online, set its connection parameters, security parameters and what data it can exchange. (done)
- Install custom Node-RED modules and build a flow to test if I can connect and send a measurement. (done)
- Build a dashboard that shows that data (done).
- Rules and alerts (done).
- Fine-tune, view the different security options (done).
- Try receiving data from the cloud (done).
image: preview of the dashbord, showing the state at the end of the blog series.
I'm using an AVNET SmartEdge device as the Thing in this story.
It is based on the Raspberry Pi's Compute design. It has additional hardware for security (TPM: Trusted Platform Module) and industrial (CAN, RS-XXX, power I/O) on board.
But those are not used in this series. As long as you have a Pi or other device with a Node-RED installation, you can play along.
Thanks for reading.
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