“Learn how to use text messaging to report on remote sensor data with Twilio and the Blues Notecard.
Story
They say the “next big thing” for the IoT is Machine Learning, but the “current big thing” is cloud dashboards. Gorgeous visualizations of accumulated data with colorful charts, informative widgets, and live data streams.
Do I agree with this? Absolutely!
I will, however, suggest that some data-digesting scenarios don’t require the full power of a cloud dashboard. Heck, maybe they don’t require much of a UI at all.
Project Summary
Today I’m going to walk you through setting up a simple IoT application that:
- Gathers sensor data (e.g. temp, humidity, pressure, and battery voltage) at a defined interval.
- Syncs accumulated sensor data with a cloud service, using low-power cellular from Blues.
- Sends you a data report in reply to an SMS sent from your phone.
The (Minimal) Hardware Requirements
I promised you a simple IoT application and that starts with a simple (but powerful) set of hardware.
Let’s begin with the carrier board - that being the Notecarrier A from Blues. This is a host board for the Notecard (a Cellular IoT system-on-module), which includes on-board cellular and GPS antennas, two Qwiic ports for connecting I2C peripherals, and header pins for hooking up to a host MCU.”