Week 10(?) – MQTT – Bianca Gan

I had a late start to this assignment, but now I’m working on using the loudness sensor I ordered.

Ran into a couple roadblocks just setting up the Arduino to read the sensor, when I realized I had to short the VUSB pads at the bottom of my Arduino in order to enable the 5V output. With that done, the sensor worked.

I was moving on to incorporating the example code when things took an unfortunate turn–

😦 😦 😦

I borrowed one from the shop, only to realize the same issue from before – with the VUSB un-shorted. So for now until my brand spankin’ new Arduino MKR1000 arrives tomorrow, I will go back to the temp sensor (or maybe use the integrated gyroscope / accelerometer) I used from the last assignment, and try and get that sending to the class MQTT broker — eventually.

First, I tried to set it up to send to shiftr.io, but kept getting an error.

I hopped around a bit and moved onto setting up the simple MQTT node client. I ran into a small problem, but thanks to the help of Gracy’s blog, I found out that I needed to install mqtt on my computer. With that, I was able to see some readings on the class broker in my terminal window.

Back to getting the Arduino to send to the class broker … Ijon helped me with MQTT explorer, and I was able to see all the readings in undnet.

I edited my code for the Arduino so that it would send an (inaccurate) reading of the surrounding temperature in both fahrenheit and celsius to the class broker every minute. And lo and behold, IT WORKED!

After I left the floor today, I did some grocery shopping and also picked up a plant from Trader Joe’s — a ‘plotted herb garden’ with rosemary, thyme, and sage. Once I got home, I set up a soil moisture sensor I got from last semester that I didn’t end up using.

Also, for another class I’m taking this semester — Streaming Against the Current — I actually live streamed myself (to a grand total of 1 audience … which was me, I had the stream open in another window) soldering the leads onto the sensor and setting it up with the Arduino and sending the data to the broker. I recorded the stream itself as well, as I have to upload evidence of the stream to the class google drive.

Here is the link to the stream of myself rambling.