Following the previous post where we saw how to transmit data on Sigfox with an Arduino MKRFox1200, in the second part we will learn how to consume these data in a backend site. To make this simple we are going to implement a solution using Adafruit.io service. This service allows to create graphics from data received from an API. We will configure Sigfox backend to push device data to this API.
Arduino MkrFox1200 sounds like Arduino for Maker using Sigfox. This board is an official Arduino product, looking like Arduino Nano series (but not pin-compatible, longer and larger)
It is composed of a SAM D21E MCU (Microchip ARM Cortex M0) operating at 48MHz. It includes 256K flash memory and 32K of SRAM. We can consider this as an Arduino under steroid.
The Sigfox radio layer is composed by an ATA8520. This is a Microchip Sigfox module based on AVR MCU. This module is communicating with the SAM D21E module with a SPI bus. The radio module is supporting RCZ1 zone (Europe).
This board can be found in many eShop places for a price around 45€ including an antenna and 2 year of Sigfox network access.
In this Post we will see how to get started with this board and how start programming with it.
I have recently discovered the smartEverything prototyping board for Sigfox. This board was used during the SigFox maker tour and It is really nice for creating some prototypes and evaluate the technology.
The board is an Arduino board based on an Atmel SAM D21 MCU (Cortex M0) with 256KB of flash and 32K SRAM running @48Mhz
The most important part is concerning the sensors available on the card and this is clearly the best point about this board : you have a lot of them available : crypto authentication chip, BLE module, GPS, NFC, Accelerometer / gyroscope / magnetometer, Pressure / Humidity / Temperature sensor, proximity light / sensor, RGB Led, Led & push button. It can be powered by USB or external 2xAA batteries.
The board cost is about 106€ and can be found at RS. It is provided with a sigfox network access to the backend.
This post detail how to get start with the board
I make a post on measuring temperature with different sensors and an objective : watch the impact of designing a correct box for you IoT you want to put in a Car.
When sun is lighting your windshield it is not a surprise to get high temperature, but did you expect to get up to 90°C when the outside temperature is about 35°C ?
The packaging have a big impact on temperature as this post will detail it.
For a certain IoT design I had to understand how my box design impacts the temperature of the circuit and of my battery. To understand how it works in the real environment, I made a small circuit based on an Arduino Nano to get temperature with 6 different sensors and store it in a flash memory for later use.
This post describes the way to do this multi-temperature sensor platform. Code is under GPL.
LoRa GPS Tracker
Todays work was to make a simple GPS tracker communicating over LoRaWAN to check the coverage of my LoRaWan gateway in the city. Basically this tracker reports a position per minute to the network. If coverage is good, position will be recorded in the backend. That’s all !
This post details how to do it easily with the low cost and common components : Arduino for the master, Microchip RN2483 for LoRaWan communication and L80 for GPS positioning.
Microchip RN2483 Lora
After spending some time reading and writing about LoRa it was a good time to make some real test of this technology.
As actually there is no network for LoRa, as much as I know, in my town, I expected to start a simple LoRa test (point to point and not as part of a WAN). I just bought some RN2483 LoRa module from Microchip online and also get some from Avnet (thank you Guillaume)
The module is easy to solder on a prototype board and get its command over a serial port. I choose to make two modules :
ATtiny45 and ATtiny85 are small Atmel micro-controleur like the 328p with less legs and smaller price. They can be nice platform for really small system does not requiring a lot of I/Os.
You can install Arduino on this device really easily. I won’t describe how to do because this excellent tutorial contains all what we need.