An intro to the Arduino Cloud

Using the Arduino Cloud

With the Arduino Cloud desktop or mobile platform, you can quickly connect, manage and monitor your devices from anywhere in the world.

Arduino Cloud allows you to automatically create any code to program your device with - just add a couple of lines to customize it how you want. If you’re new to Arduino don’t worry there’s example code for hundreds of sensors and actuators.

The following steps will guide you to start using the Arduino Cloud:

1. Install the Arduino Create Agent plugin.

2. Check if you have a cloud compatible board. The picture below shows all official Arduino boards that are compatible.

Note: The MKR GSM 1400 and MKR NB 1500 require a SIM card to connect to the Cloud, as they communicate over the mobile networks. The MKR WAN 1300 and 1310 board requires a Arduino PRO Gateway LoRa to connect to the Cloud.

3. Create an Arduino account by signing up to Arduino.

4. Access the Arduino Cloud from any page on arduino.cc by clicking on the bento menu (9-dots) on the top right corner, or you can go directly to the Arduino Cloud.

Creating a Thing

1. The user journey always begins by creating a new Thing. In the Thing overview, we can choose what device to use, what Wi-Fi network we want to connect to, and create variables that we can monitor and control.

2. Next we need to add a device by clicking on the "Select device" button on the Thing overview. Here, we choose from any board that we have already been configured, or select the Configure new device option.

3. Now we can add our first variable by clicking on the Add variable button. We can choose name, data type, update the setting and interaction mode for our variable. There are several data types we can choose from, such as int, float, boolean, long, char. There’s also special variables, such as Temperature, Velocity, and Luminance that can be used. The variables we create are automatically generated into a sketch file.

4. Finally, we need to connect to a Wi-Fi network by simply clicking the Configure button in the network section. Enter your network credentials and click Save. This information will also be generated into your sketch file!

Building the Sketch

Now that you are all set up, let’s have a look at the interface!

A special sketch file can now be found in the Sketch tab, which includes all of the configurations that you have made. When the sketch has been uploaded, it will work as a regular sketch, but it will also update the Cloud variables that we use!

Additionally, each time we create a variable that has the Interaction Mode enabled, a function will also be generated. Every time this variable is triggered from the Cloud, it will execute the code within this function! This means that we can leave most of the code out of the loop() and only run code when needed.

When we are happy with our sketch, we can upload it to our board, by clicking the upload button.

After we have successfully uploaded the code, we can open the Serial Monitor tab to view information regarding our connection. If it is successful, it will print connected to network_name and connected to cloud.

If it fails to connect, it will print the errors here as well. Now that we have configured the device & network, created variables, completed the sketch and successfully uploaded the code, we can move on to the fun part, the dashboard!

Creating the dashboard

Dashboards are visual user interfaces for interacting with your boards over the Cloud, and we can set up many different setups depending on what your IoT project needs.

We can access our dashboards by clicking on the Dashboards tab at the top of the Arduino Cloud interface, where we can create new dashboards, and see a list of dashboards created for other Things.

If we click on Create new dashboard, we enter a dashboard editor. Here, we can create something called widgets. Widgets are the visual representation of our variables we create, and there are many different ones to choose from. Below is an example using several types of widgets.

When we create widgets, we also need to link them to our variables. This is done by clicking on a widget we create, selecting a Thing, and selecting a variable that we want to link.

Once it is linked, we can either interact with it, for example a button, or we can monitor a value from a sensor. As long as our board is connected to the Cloud, the values will update automatically!

Congratulations! Now you are ready to create your own IoT system. You can find more information about the Arduino Cloud here.

Network Configuration

Note: that the Arduino Cloud operates with different domains and ports, which means that if we want devices working with the Arduino Cloud, they need to be allowed access to certain domains through your firewall.

If you are connected to your school or university networks, please provide your admin with the following instructions:

1. Whitelist the following domains and ports in your firewall:

2. Provide NTP access to time.arduino.cc, note that the NTP port for time.arduino.cc is 123 UDP.

If you are having issues connecting to the Arduino Cloud through your home network, follow these instructions:

For Windows users

1. Navigate to your firewall, go to Start > search firewall > open Windows Firewall.

2. Click on Allow a program/app or feature through Windows Firewall.

3. Then open Change Settings.