WEEK14 (FYP1)

 WEEK14    

Activity : ThingSpeak

What is IOT ?

Internet of Things (IoT) describes an emerging trend where a large number of embedded devices (things) are connected to the Internet. These connected devices communicate with people and other things and often provide sensor data to cloud storage and cloud computing resources where the data is processed and analyzed to gain important insights. Cheap cloud computing power and increased device connectivity is enabling this trend.

ThingSpeak is an IOT analytics platform service that allows to aggregate, visualize, and analyze live data streams in the cloud. It can send data to ThingSpeak™ from the devices, create instant visualizations of live data, and send alerts using web services like Twitter® and Twilio®. With MATLAB® analytics inside ThingSpeak, it can write and execute MATLAB code to perform preprocessing, visualizations, and analyses. ThingSpeak enables engineers and scientists to prototype and build IoT systems without setting up servers or developing web software.

IoT solutions are built for many vertical applications such as environmental monitoring and control, health monitoring, vehicle fleet monitoring, industrial monitoring and control, and home automation.

At a high level, many IoT systems can be described using the diagram below:

On the left, it have the smart devices (the “things” in IoT) that live at the edge of the network. These devices collect data and include things like wearable devices, wireless temperatures sensors, heart rate monitors, and hydraulic pressure sensors, and machines on the factory floor.

In the middle, the cloud where data from many sources is aggregated and analyzed in real time, often by an IoT analytics platform designed for this purpose.

The right side of the diagram depicts the algorithm development associated with the IoT application. Here an engineer or data scientist tries to gain insight into the collected data by performing historical analysis on the data. In this case, the data is pulled from the IoT platform into a desktop software environment to enable the engineer or scientist to prototype algorithms that may eventually execute in the cloud or on the smart device itself.

An IoT system includes all these elements. ThingSpeak fits in the cloud part of the diagram and provides a platform to quickly collect and analyze data from internet connected sensors.

Picture above is the example of data collected from the adruino module and uploaded to ThingSpeak via ESP8266.

ThingSpeak Key Features

ThingSpeak allows you to aggregate, visualize and analyze live data streams in the cloud. Some of the key capabilities of ThingSpeak include the ability to:

• Easily configure devices to send data to ThingSpeak using popular IoT protocols.
• Visualize your sensor data in real-time.
• Aggregate data on-demand from third-party sources.
• Use the power of MATLAB to make sense of your IoT data.
• Run your IoT analytics automatically based on schedules or events.
• Prototype and build IoT systems without setting up servers or developing web software.
• Automatically act on your data and communicate using third-party services like Twilio® or Twitter®.