Dashboard Research - Kevin Power #2

Intro

Over the last 2 weeks I was looking into various IoT cloud platforms we could use for this project. The requirements were that the platform needed to be MQTT enabled and have options for: analogue in, analogue out, digital in, digital out, camera feed and Maps with Waypoint functionality.

In total I looked at the following platforms:

  • TheThings.io
  • AWS
  • Adafruit
  • Thinger.io
  • Blynk
  • Microsoft Azure
  • ThingSpeak
Out of these their were three I had a more detailed look at to see if they would be feasible for our project.

AWS


The first platform I looked into was AWS, after researching for a few hours I came to the conclusion that this dashboard will not work for our project due to a number of reasons.

  • Very Expensive compared to other options
  • To complicated to explain to kids
  • A lot of Dashboard work needed (need to create most graphs)
  • No map/camera functionality easily built in.
  • Lastly, Amazon and Microsoft don't get along so no ready to use microbit support.
  • Supports MQTT, but only through use of Amazon's MQTT platform.

Thinger.Io



Thinger.io is a viable option but comes with it's own positives and negatives.

Positives:

  • Has AI/AO/DI/DO support
  • Has Maps Support
  • Easy to look at dashboard

Negatives:

  • Very Expensive
  • Need to build a lot of component manually through API
  • Essentially needs to built from ground up for our project
  • Limited dashboard functionality without paying.

Adafruit


Adafruit by far seems like the best option I have discovered so far for use in this project. It does have some negatives and area's that still need to be researched and clarified but it certainly has a lot of positives.

Positives:

  • Supports AI/AO/DI/DO
  • Supports MQTT
  • Has there own Makecode for Adafruit technology
  • Open Source
  • Has Default Maps support and customisable way point support
  • Camera is unknown but seems possible initially.
  • Free to use if no extra tech needed
Unknowns/Negatives:
  • Use of Camera needs to be researched more, can use Adafruit camera's unknown about other camera's
  • Theoretically works, need to get a working example still
  • Issue's working with MQTT connection to a microbit but seems do able.

In Conclusion

Adafruit seems like the best option out of all the technologies I have researched although even more research is needed to highlight key area's of adafruit where it might let us down.

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