Future world is the world where everything is connected.Nowadays electronics engineers researches mainly on IoT-internet of things.we need internet of everything.There are many boards and modules in market which helps hobbyists to develop their prototypes and play with connected things.Arduino is already providing Ethernet shield ,WiFi shield for connect the device into internet.Raspberry Pi is also came up with their WiFi and LAN.especially their latest Raspberry Pi3 has inbuilt Bluetooth and WiFi
But in this blog post i am going to explain my experience with a cool microcontroller board other than Arduino and Raspberry Pi.That is Particle core - a microcontroller board with inbuilt WiFi module and cloud connectivity.(https://www.particle.io/)
Particle core
Particle is core is one of the amazing and cool stuff for electronic engineers,hobbyists and prototype makers.This board can be easily connected to internet as easily as we connect our smartphones to internet.- It uses ARM 32-bit Cortex™-M3 CPU Core as its brain
- The WiFi module is CC3000
Some of its features makes this board extra cool.
1.This board can be coded remotely.
Yes you can code this board far away from your hardware.Because Particle uses a
web IDE,the code is debugging from their cloud and uploading it to Particle core via internet.All you need is set up your account in particles web IDE(https://build.particle.io/build/) you will have a unique id for your particle.if you keep connected the particle with WiFi you can code it from anywhere in the world.
2.Arduino like language.
No need to study a new language for programming your particle.The coding language used for Particle is very much similar to arduino C.So any arduino hobbyist can easily play with particle.
3. Particle variables
Particle variable is another cool thing.you can send particle variable data into cloud.it can easily see using URLs which is based upon your devices unique id.It have its own API.Also if you are using
Particle Dev(a desktop application) in your computer,you can easily watch the current value of particle variables.All you need to do is just declare your variable as particle variable by simple command,then the data will be in the cloud.No need of any long coding (https://docs.particle.io/reference/firmware/core/)
4.Particle Functions
These are cloud functions.You can easily trigger value from cloud and controll your device according to that function. This is also working using particles own rest API (https://docs.particle.io/reference/firmware/core/)5.Tinker the mobile App
Tinker is a mobile app which can use in your smartphones.if you upload the corresponding code for tinker in your particle core you can control all pins of your device using your phone.you can make a pin HIGH or LOW or can write and read analog values.
6.connection with IFTTT
Particle is a verified channel in IFTTT services. You can write conditional statement actions using this.
For eg;if you want a mail notification/sms/push notification when your particle variable value is below or above(like your room temperature is x ) that is so easy with IFTTT and particle
Check my personal recipe ( https://ifttt.com/myrecipes/personal/34813588)
