How to connect Arduino Uno WiFi to ThingSpeak

Shaun VermaakCOG Lead Engineer
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My name is Shaun Vermaak and I have always been fascinated with technology and how we use it to enhance our lives and business.
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I took on this little project as a proof of concept for IoT devices. My main goals were to find the easiest, cheapest way to stream data to the cloud. This article describes how to stream telemetry data to ThingSpeak via REST API. This can also be done with Azure IoT hub with a local gateway.

1) What you need

DHT22 - Temperature/Humidity Sensor

MH-RD - Snow/Raindrop Detection Sensor

YL-69 - Soil Moisture Sensor

Arduino UNO WiFi connected to WiFI with internet access 

Resistor 10k Ohm

Battery Pack

ThingSpeak Account with a channel configured

Arduino IDE

Any waterproof enclosure big enough to fit components


2) Fritzing Diagram



3) Sketch

a) After connecting all the sensors and cables as per the diagram above, open the Arduino IDE and copy and paste this into a new sketch.


#include <Wire.h>
#include <DHT.h>
#include <UnoWiFiDevEd.h>

#define CONNECTOR     "rest"
#define SERVER_ADDR   "api.thingspeak.com"
#define APIKEY_THINGSPEAK  "****************" //Insert your API Key

void setup() {
  Ciao.begin();
}

void loop() {
  DHT dht;
  dht.setup(2);

  String uri = "/update?api_key=";
  uri += APIKEY_THINGSPEAK;
  uri += "&field1=";
  uri += String(dht.getHumidity());
  uri += "&field2=";
  uri += String(dht.getTemperature());
  uri += "&field3=";
  uri += String(analogRead(A0));
  uri += "&field4=";
  uri += String(analogRead(A1));

  Ciao.println("Sending data on ThingSpeak Channel");
  CiaoData data = Ciao.write(CONNECTOR, SERVER_ADDR, uri);

  if (!data.isEmpty()){
    Ciao.println( "State: " + String (data.get(1)) );
    Ciao.println( "Response: " + String (data.get(2)) );
  }
  else{
    Ciao.println("Write Error");
  }
  delay(900000);
}

b) Change the ThingSpeak API to you channel API

c) Plug in Arduino Uno and hit CTRL+U to upload sketch to device


4) End Result

As data is streamed to ThingSpeak the online dashboard will populate these values to the graphs, here's mine http://thingspeak.com/channels/265283

Screenshot of ThingSpeak dashboard



Enclosure and soil moisture sensor



Closeup of enclosure



Closeup of soil moisture sensor



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Shaun VermaakCOG Lead Engineer
CERTIFIED EXPERT
My name is Shaun Vermaak and I have always been fascinated with technology and how we use it to enhance our lives and business.

Comments (1)

Hey man, I'm working with an Arduino UNO WiFi board, and am getting errors such as "ciao was not declared in this scope". Could you shed some light on this, and also how to set up the framework for basic ThingSpeak connectivity with the UNO WiFi?

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