Chapter 3. Storing and Visualizing Your Data

In the previous chapter, you built a sensor module that collects temperature and humidity data and sends it wirelessly to your central coordinator. In this chapter, you will explore some ways to persistently store this collected sensor data, and to visualize the data using convenient graphs.

First you will see how to connect your coordinator to the Internet and send its data to the Beebotte cloud platform. You will learn how to create a custom dashboard inside that platform that can show the collected data in a convenient graph format.

Second, you will see how you can collect and visualize the data on your own computer instead of sending it to the Internet directly.

For the first part, you will need a shield to connect your coordinator Arduino to the Internet, in addition to the hardware recommended for the coordinator in the previous chapter. This book provides suggestions for these two shields:

• The Arduino Ethernet shield (https://www.arduino.cc...

Storing your data in the cloud

When it comes to storing your data somewhere online, there are literally dozens of online platforms that offer some kind of data storage service aimed at collecting sensor data. Each of these has different features, complexity, and cost, and you are encouraged to have a look around at what is available.

Even though a lot of platforms are available, almost none of them are really suited for a hobby sensor network such as the one presented in this book. Most platforms support the basic collection of data and offer a Web API to access the data, but there were two requirements that ruled out most of the platforms:

1. It has to be affordable for a home user with just a bit of data. Ideally, there is a free version to get started.

2. It has to support creating a dashboard that can show data and graphs, but can also show input elements that can be used to talk back to the network (this will be used in the next chapter to create an online thermostat).

When this book was written...

Keeping your data locally

Instead of connecting your Arduino to the Internet and storing your data there, perhaps you want to maximize your control over your data and instead store it on your own computer.

There are plenty of options for doing so. Examples include: running a server in your local network that uses MQTT or some other protocol and having the coordinator connect to it, adding an SD card (Secure Digital) to the Arduino and logging data on there, or connecting the coordinator to a computer directly through USB and collecting the data on the computer, and so on.

Since creating the necessary scripts or setting up the right software is more work and more complicated than using a pre-existing online platform and there are so many options available, these will not be covered in detail in this book.

Instead, a single example will be given in which the coordinator will send its data through the USB serial connection to a computer, which will store the collected measurements in an SQLite...

Summary

In this chapter, you have seen how to get the sensor readings off your coordinator and into the cloud or onto your computer. You can visualize your data in convenient graphs, which gives you a great insight into your environment.

In the next chapter, you will continue building on top of this by letting your system not only monitor your surroundings, but also automatically control your heating or air conditioning system, based on the measurements made and the parameters you specify.