If you have used ThingSpeak MQTT in the past, I wanted to mention one big change to how you access the service. The new MQTT service is available at the hostname: mqtt3.thingspeak.com.

If you decide that MQTT is right for your IoT project, you can start by adding a new device to your ThingSpeak account. This will set up the MQTT credentials needed for the device to connect to ThingSpeak. MQTT works well for low-power devices and low-latency applications.

ThingSpeak’s new MQTT support includes:

• Improved access control
• More concurrent subscriptions
• Device management
• Streamlined topic patterns to make coding easier

We’ve updated our documentation to include several new MQTT examples with code for the new interface. We have added a new example to secure the transmission of data between devices and ThingSpeak.

• Publish and Subscribe to a ThingSpeak Channel Using Secure MQTT
• Publish and Subscribe to a Channel Using Desktop MQTT Client
• Publish to a ThingSpeak Channel Using a Particle Device Client via MQTT

Even if you do not have devices and sensors sending data to ThingSpeak, you can still use ThingView to see public channels. For example, if you want to see the charts created by sensors in my house, just add Channel ID 9 to ThingView. You see charts of light levels and temperature generated by my house.

Check out ThingView on Google Play!

[via GitHub]

The idea is that it is frustrating waiting for luggage at the airport and wondering where it is and why it is not on the baggage carousel. With this project, you can track luggage from start to finish. The advantages are not only for the traveler, the airlines could track luggage as well and get quality statistics for each airport. And, the base system has many applications outside of travel such as the Automotive Industry.

Chris explains the project really well on his blog and with a YouTube video.

POST https://api.thingspeak.com/update
     api_key=XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
     field1=73
     metadata={"officeTemp":73}

The full ThingSpeak Channels API is available on ThingSpeak Docs.

[via ThingSpeak Forums]

First, create a new Channel, and fill out the field names as follows: Field 1 = “CPU Usage (%)”, Field2 = “Memory Usage (%)”, Field 3 = “Disk Usage (%)”.

Next, add the open-source server statistics script to your server, which can be found at: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/iobridge/thingspeak/master/lib/server_stats.sh

Inside the script there’s an API Key variable, which should be replaced with your specific Channel’s API Key (leave the single quotes, and only replace the X’s): api_key='XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX'

For the script to work properly, install the “bc” package via: sudo apt-get install bc

Then make the script executable: chmod +x server_stats.sh

Finally, edit your crontab file: crontab -e

Make the script execute every minute by adding this line to your crontab (make sure you use the proper path to the script): * * * * * /path/to/server_stats.sh

The script will then automatically POST server stats to the Channel specified by the API Key every minute.

You can see some of the ThingSpeak server statistics here:

• https://thingspeak.com/channels/12370
• https://thingspeak.com/channels/12371

About Phusion Passenger

Phusion Passenger is a web server and application server for Ruby, Python, Node.js and Meteor web apps. It makes web app deployments a lot simpler and less complex, by managing your apps’ processes and resources for you.

What makes it so fast and reliable is its C++ core, its zero-copy architecture, its watchdog system and its hybrid evented, multi-threaded and multi-process design.

Here’s what the new Spline Chart looks like:

Here’s a regular line chart:

And just as a reminder, here are all of the supported ThingSpeak Chart types:

• type=bar
• type=column
• type=line
• type=spline

For complete ThingSpeak Charts documentation, check out ThingSpeak Docs.

Mi Humidor de Cigarros conectado a Internet por medio de un Arduino

We have developed a new ThingSpeak App and it is available now to all ThingSpeak Users.

The new TalkBack App allows devices to check ThingSpeak for commands to execute. TalkBack is perfect for battery-powered devices that need to sleep most of the time and wake up to see if there is anything to do and then go back to sleep, like a door lock for example. The lock is mostly going to be asleep to save battery power, but it can wake up periodically and check TalkBack or be woken up by a button press to see if it should be opened or not.

Devices powered by ThingSpeak and now with TalkBack will be able to both push sensor data to the ThingSpeak Cloud and check TalkBack if any commands are available all in one request. To get started, we have the complete TalkBack API Documentation and an Arduino Yún Tutorial available now.

Atmel-powered Arduino Yún Tutorial

With the release of TalkBack, we created a tutorial for the Arduino Yún. The “Yún” is a special combination of easy-to-program Arduino with an additional processor, an Atheros AR9331, running Linux and the OpenWrt wireless stack. Programming the Arduino via USB is identical to the Arduino Leonardo. Once the Arduino Yún is connected to Wi-Fi, the Arduino has full access to ThingSpeak Cloud Services and the TalkBack App and API. Check out the Controlling the Arduino Yún with TalkBack tutorial for a step-by-step way of controlling the Arduino Yún via TalkBack and the ThingSpeak Cloud.

TalkBack is available now to all ThingSpeak Users and to new users by Sign Up for Free at ThingSpeak.com! Please feel free to share with us and the ThingSpeak Community with the awesome ways you use TalkBack with your ThingSpeak Projects!

So, by using Java, a simple “Hello World” app becomes this easy…

Channel channel = new Channel(channelNumber, apiWriteKey);

Entry entry = new Entry();
entry.setField(1, "Hello World");
channel.update(entry);

All of the source code and documentation are available on GitHub. Get started right away with building your Internet of Things with the Java Programming Language and the ThingSpeak Cloud.

Excellent work Andrew – thanks for contributing to the Open Source ThingSpeak Community!

[via Angry Electron / GitHub]

Question: How do I find ‘public’ ThingSpeak Channels?

In order to help developers find open data inside of ThingSpeak Channels, we created a new API for searching the public ThingSpeak Channels.

Here are the Public ThingSpeak Channels. We order the channels by activity and completeness. Channels may be tagged and this helps find data that you might find interesting for your application. We also have API commands that you can pass to the ThingSpeak Channel API to return the public ThingSpeak Channels in either JSON or XML format.

Here are some easy examples:

• http://api.thingspeak.com/channels/public.json – Returns the Public ThingSpeak Channels in JSON format
• http://api.thingspeak.com/channels/public.xml – – Returns the Public ThingSpeak Channels in XML format
• http://api.thingspeak.com/channels/public.json?tag=temperature – Returns the Public ThingSpeak Channels in JSON format that match the tag, “temperature”

For support and questions, please use the ThingSpeak Forum.

Indoor Environmental Quality (IEQ) is the measure of comfort and includes factors such as temperature, humidity, pressure, noise level, and indoor air quality. don’s original goal was to monitor the IEQ of his baby’s room, but he soon realized that his project has more applications around the house and for others.

Don published the full details of the project and submitted it to the Green Design Contest at Instructables. Great work!

[via Instructables]

The Supermechanical team put this combination of Twine and ThingSpeak to use right away. They created a “Productivity Quantification” system to capture events around the office and try to determine how productive they are. They were able to track how much coffee they were drinking, snacks they were eating, toilets they were flushing, and things they were finishing. The results are a quantified picture of office productivity and a beautiful display of the data via the ThingSpeak API.

Creating a Twine Action to push data to ThingSpeak is really easy to do. Here’s what it looks like…

To do more with ThingSpeak and Twine make sure to check out the tutorial on the Supermechnical blog.

[via Twine / SUPERMECHANICAL.BLOG]

Merci beaucoup.

[via YouTube]

We want to send a special thanks to powermik, oiotoshi, sekjal, and akinsgre for contributing new code and reporting bugs.

All of the latest code is available on GitHub, so start building your own Internet of Things today!

One that has piqued our interest is the EVE Alpha for the Raspberry Pi created by Ciseco from Nottingham, United Kingdom. Wireless is a key part of the Internet of Things as with wireless we can connect more things in a more seamless way, then bridge them to the Internet. EVE Alpha aims at giving you a lot of wireless options in a tiny form factor all connected to an integrated computer called the Raspberry Pi.

Members of the ThingSpeak team are backers of this project and many others. We love finding new ways to get data to and from web services. This is exactly what we are here to do! We are looking forward to connecting the EVE to a host of web services (and ones we haven’t even released yet). Another key feature is the suite of wireless technologies that we want to prototype with all on one board. At the timing of this writing the EVE Alpha Kickstarter campaign is close to being funded, so there are high chances that Ciseco will deliver the Swiss Army knife of wireless development platforms!

[via Kickstarter]

.NET Micro Framework Developer [paolopat] created a client for the ThingSpeak platform. This allows any device that supports the .NET Micro Framework to access ThingSpeak web services by using the μPLibrary 1.8. The library is available on NuGet Gallery and abstracts the ThingSpeak API. The library works with the popular Netduino Plus and other devices running .NET Micro Framework.

Paolo says,

“With more and more embedded devices “smart” in the world, begins to take on an increasingly important concept of the Internet of Things (IoT), a neologism by which you want to express the capacity that these devices (brutally “things”) in order to connect to the world wide web and exchange information. In this come into play a number of online platforms that provide the service to upload and logging information in real-time making it available to other devices that request them. The architecture is oriented such that the platform is obviously RESTful where the data grouped into channels and feeds are accessible through the concept of URL.

One of the main platforms is certainly ThingSpeak, for which I have implemented a client for. NET Micro Framework and I have included in my library uPLibrary (now at version 1.8.0.0) present on CodePlex, namespace uPLibrary.IoT.ThingSpeak.”

Thank you, Paolo!

[via Embedded101]

For more information, check out our tutorial and visit GitHub for the full source code. Thanks Daniel!

[via RubyGems.org]

All ThingSpeak Channels are continuous logs of data. Using API commands, you can access recent data and historical data. The default API parameters allow for easy access to recent data. To get access to older data, all you need to do is pass in a “start” and “end” parameter into a channel request.

Here is my feed from New Year’s Eve:

http://api.thingspeak.com/channels/9/feed.json?start=2011-12-31%2000:00:00&end=2012-01-01%2000:00:00

And remember, you can also do this with charts too:

http://api.thingspeak.com/channels/9/charts/2?start=2011-12-31%2000:00:00&end=2012-01-01%2000:00:00&average=60

Let us know if you need any more clarification on the many API parameters possible. Have fun!

PS. Some big features coming soon!

Since the project release, there has been much activity. A part from CheerLights being discussed on blogs like MAKE and Lifehacker, the community has created some interesting bits of tech that extend the project further than lights. So if you don’t have a way to connect your lights together with CheerLights, you can connect your mobile phone, browser, and web sites together by subscribing to the CheerLights feed. Right now you can check the latest CheerLights color with an Android App created by @ChrisLeitner. Another really neat thing is a browser plugin for Chrome designed by Josh Crumley. So, in the top corner of your web browser you can see the latest color in an unassuming way. It’s a little reminder that we are connected.

To join CheerLights, all you have to do is build something that subscribed to the CheerLights ThingSpeak Channel or access the data using JSON and XML. You can also use the apps, browser plugins, or web widgets to see the colors. Visit the CheerLights website hosted on Tumblr for details on making a controller with Arduino, ioBridge, or Digi’s ConnectPort.

To control CheerLights, just send a Tweet to @CheerLights and mention a color.

Just think when you send this Tweet that you are updating 1000’s of lights, apps, browsers, and widgets all at the same time.

Spread some cheer…

[via MAKE / Lifehacker / CBC / ioBridge Projects]

Topics on the agenda:

• Switch over to Ruby on Rails 3.1
• ThingSpeak v2.0
• Active ThingSpeak Projects
• Adding modularity and tests to the GitHub repository
• …btw, we’re hiring!

Background on ThingSpeak:

ThingSpeak is an open source web application and API to manage devices, to create device interactions, and to store data. Users can use the hosted version of ThingSpeak or setup instances on their own servers by getting the source code from GitHub. The technology behind ThingSpeak is Ruby 1.9.2, Rails 3.0, EventMachine, Phusion Passenger, Nginx, and Memcached to form a highly scalable infrastructure for the emerging Internet of Things and its data model requirements.

You use ThingSpeak to Send and Receive “data” via simple HTTP requests, much like going to a web page and filling out a form. Data can be from
anything — Blood Sugar Levels measured by a glucose meter, Server Usage and Uptime reported by servers, or Location Info from a mobile phone. Once the data is in ThingSpeak, you can build applications that retrieve the data, use the data for process decision-making, and reporting.

[via Pittsburgh Ruby Users Group]

We have created a new ThingSpeak Sketch for Arduino 1.0 that you can use for the Arduino and Ethernet Shield or the Arduino Ethernet all-in-one. All you have to do is add your ThingSpeak Write API Key to the sketch, upload to the Arduino, and connect to your network. The sketch includes automatic network configuration with DHCP, domain name resolution using DNS, a watchdog / reset function to keep the Arduino online, and a function to update ThingSpeak Channels. The new sketch has been running without hiccup in our lab for few weeks. We hope that you get the same reliability. Go ahead and copy, transform, and combine…

View Arduino 1.0 –> ThingSpeak Sketch on GitHub

Visit the ThingSpeak Plugin page for more information on how to use this plugin with your HomeVision home automation system.

The mashup community ProgrammableWeb indexed the ThingSpeak API and the ThingSpeak Chart API. We entered the category of “Other”. Just imagine what web developers will create now that they have the Internet of Things at their fingertips.

[via ProgrammableWeb]

Brett says,

ThingSpeak is a cool application that allows you to send it any kind of data you want graphed.  Your imagination is the limitation. Some ideas of what can be graphed:

• How many beers you drank last night
• The temperature of your office during the day
• The CPU load of your server
• The number of calories you’ve consumed
• The number of calories you’ve burned

These are great ideas and applications!

[via The Cobwebs of My Mind]

Last.txt

Let’s say you have an Arduino and you want to get the last value in a channel. You could get your feed and then write some parsing code to extract the data that you are looking for. It’s a waste of code space and also fills your finite buffers on your microcontroller. Let the cloud do the work and give you just the value you are looking for.

Here’s how you would get our light levels: Live Demo

[cce]http://api.thingspeak.com/channels/9/field/1/last.txt[/cce]

Modifying the response

You can even add data to the response. Maybe you have Twilio reading back your temperature. It would not be much fun if Twillio says to you, “80”. Sensor data without context is noise!

Here are two optional parameters when returning the last data on a ThingSpeak Channel:

• prepend=[text to add before the API response]
• append=[text to add after the API response]

Live Demo

[cce]http://api.thingspeak.com/channels/9/field/1/last.txt?prepend=Your%20light%20level%20is%20&append=.%20Is%20someone%20in%20your%20room?[/cce]

Check out the ThingSpeak Documentation for more information.

ThingSpeak is an open web of things platform to allow devices to interact with web services, apps, and things. ThingSpeak is open to any type of data from devices and applications.  ThingSpeak is a cloud service…things-as-a-service (TaaS)? ThingSpeak is open now.

Features:

• Open API – connect devices and applications via the Internet to send and receive data
• Multiple Data Types – numbers (decimal and comma) and alphanumeric strings
• Real-time Data Processing – time scaling, averaging, median, summing, and rounding
• Time and Location – localized time, geolocation, latitude, longitude, and elevation
• Social Context – augment data with status updates
• Charts – instant visualization and embed tools
• Apps – built-in apps to connect things to web services
• Plugins – sandbox to create mashups, visualizations, and apps

Get started by signing up and creating your own channel for your anything you can imagine. We are excited by what you will come up with and the direction that you will take this project.