Alex9562 just shared a new project: "IOT Shed"
The driver behind this project is to allow the remote control of some of the equipment in my shed. I have a CNC router/laser cutter that uses my compressor and dust extractor whilst it is running, and well whats the point in having a computer comtrolled machine if you have to hang around and turn the other auxiliary bits on and off?!?
There are quite a few ways to achieve this, one I seriously considered and had used previoulsy was TCP ModBus and an Arduino, but my control software won’t allow multiple ModBus slaves, so that was out. The other issue here is that an Ethernet shield is expensive and needs wiring, if I was to go wireless then the Wifi shield is even more expensive.
After a bit of research I decided the best tool for this project was a Particle Photon. These little micro-processors boards are pretty amazing; they have built in WIFI, 120mhz processor, a language very similar to an Arduino, they are cheap, and the list goes on. But the best part of these processors is actually not what is on the board, they come with a free cloud service that opens up a whole new world including over the air updates, web hooks and lots more. Check out the documentation online for more info.
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