In different previous post, I explained what is SigFox technology (a radio-communication system made for Internet Of Things, allowing a sensor to communicate with servers on Internet at an affordable price) and how to send data from a sensor to the SigFox backend.
This new post is explaining how to configure this back-end to get the sensor data loaded in your system and create your own application.
As described in a previous post, TelecomDesign chip can be customized to add your own application built-in the chip and made a really affordable IoT platform. This blog post is describing the first step to start building it. Read Next for details.
I already wrote some stuff about Sigfox here, so may know that it is a really promising French technology IoT oriented. So I have a project to connect a Raspberry Pi and arduino system on a such peripheral. The use of this technology is quite easy as it works like a modem, based on AT command transfered over a 9600bps serial line. The main issue is that the chip is really CMS and hard to hack at home easily… by the way, as you see, a poor soldering makes it working for the test purpose.
As much as I have test, I can say that using this device to communicate with an Arduino or a PI is really easy ! code can be written in less than a minute ; compared to what you have to do to make wifi / Ethernet / GSM working in a stable way, this is incredibly easier ! You can also use the device as an autonomous sensor for temperature and contact switch of your choice for an affordable price. In my point of view one thing is missing : you do not really know the signal quality and if you have a good connection or not with sigfox network. [update] The RSSI is indicated in the SigFox Api on the backend side for each of the received messages [/update] . Meaning you must receive the first one to know if the location is covered or not. This can be a problem to deliver a product and get an easy support to your consumer. The other limit of the technology, as much as I know is that you can transmit data but not receive some from the SigFox network [update] The ability for the device to receive messages will be soon added with limitation, but it will [/update]. In many case it is enough but sometime you like to respond to a specific value received. Read next to get details on how to use it …
Last year in December, I gave a talk on Internet of Things, here is the youtube video (in French) – The slide are also here : http://slid.es/disk91/internetofthings
RfRpi card is a RF433 emitter and receiver add-on of Raspberry Pi. This card is based on high quality receiver and transmitter I have selected after tests you can find here and here. This article describes how to get start with this shield.
To buy this shield the best way is to sent me a comment on this post, the price is 60€
The Shield is now working with Raspberry PI B+ and previous versions. The Shield is also working with Raspberry PI 2+. For these two last version you need to compile a kernel driver.