Robert John likes to keep a constant eye on the current temperature and humidity of his room, as even small fluctuations can lead to uncomfortable conditions. And although he can remotely turn the air conditioning on or off, he still needed a way to track these values throughout the day and log them for future reference.
To create this smart device, Robert used an Arduino Oplà IoT Kit, as it contains a MKR WiFi 1010, a MKR IoT Carrier with a built-in screen and capacitive buttons, and a PIR sensor for detecting motion. Once connected together, he then configured a new dashboard in the Arduino IoT Cloud with two variables for the temperature and humidity, which are updated once every minute by the MKR WiFi 1010.
In addition to these values being shown in virtual gauges, the dashboard tracks them in a set of two graphs for up to 15 days. The carrier board also displays the current time, temperature, and humidity on its screen for convenient viewing which turns off automatically to save power when no one is nearby.
To see more about this project and how it was built, you can read John’s write-up here.
The Arduino Cloud Games was first hinted at just after Christmas, 2021. That’s how long these amazing members of the Arduino community have been toiling on some genuinely incredible projects.
The top three were just announced live on the community day at Arduino Week 2022, so we thought we’d give you a closer look at what they built. Firstly though, even if it’s something of a cliche, we’ve got to say that picking them was insanely difficult. The quality, imagination and skills we’ve seen throughout the Arduino Cloud Games has been staggering. Seriously, there are very few people who work at Arduino that could build such amazing things.
So if you didn’t make it into the top three, despair not! You were up against some of the toughest creative competition in the maker world. You all blew our minds with every new project that arrived on Project Hub, so you should be incredibly proud that you made it into the finals. Keep on building!
Quick Recap of the Arduino Cloud Games
The objective was fairly broad. Initially people were asked just to pitch an idea for a Cloud-connected project. Of the hundreds of pitches we received, 100 were chosen to receive a free Oplà IoT Kit to be used in the build.
We’ve had a couple of great months over on the Arduino Discord server chatting about the projects as the participants got to work. It’s been one of those wonderful examples of what the Arduino community is all about. Some wonderful collaboration, makers helping makers, and a showcase of talent that’s such high quality it’s hard to believe.
So, chosen with a great deal of difficulty, here are the top three Arduino Cloud Games projects!
BRONZE: Oplà Spotify Controller
Altug put together a project that, on face value, is quite simple. But this is a swan; gliding gracefully on the surface, while furiously kicking below the water to drive everything forward against a strong current!
With some devilishly cunning workarounds, he was able to connect his Oplà IoT Kit to the Spotify API. From there he turned the screen and capacitive buttons into a music controller, while displaying extra info in an Arduino Cloud dashboard.
The Spotify Controller was chosen for third place as it’s almost like two projects in one. A web server, and an API controller. It expands control of a closed system (in this case Spotify) to offer a very neat solution that anyone can build for themselves. We also found it particularly inspiring, as seeing an Arduino device controlling a service like Spotify makes you realize just how much an Arduino project is capable of. And that’s worth the $250 Arduino Store voucher, for sure.
If you can control Spotify, you can control anything!
SILVER: Smart Fitting Room
Problem solving and finding solutions are two different things. As Henry Ford said, “If I’d have asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” That’s never been more clear since we saw momentumhw’s Arduino Cloud Games project.
His system places an Oplà inside each cubicle of a clothes store changing room. As well as having a couple of environmental controls on there, the primary focus was on customer assistance.
People in the changing rooms can call for assistance without needing to leave the cubicle. Furthermore, the Arduino Cloud dashboard gives the store owner (or whoever’s manning the changing rooms) a detailed control and monitoring station to keep an eye on things.
Such an inspired way to give an Arduino project a commercial application, which it earned the $500 store voucher. Not only that, but it also shows small business owners how they could improve their customer experience in simple, ingenious, inexpensive ways.
GOLD: Bakerino
Which brings us to the top award. Nestaflavio built a project at the request of his girlfriend, who has a particular passion for baking bread and pastries. The difficulty she faces is the ambient weather conditions in their locale. Primarily, it’s very dry, and the lack of humidity prevented dough from rising properly.
So this project became a leavening chamber, which allows you to control the temperature and humidity while the dough is rising. With the Oplà taking care of the sensor monitoring and environment control, it also provided a display and buttons for adjustments. Coupled with remote monitoring and controls from an Arduino Cloud dashboard, this project solved the issue with grace and ingenuity.
We felt it was the quintessential Arduino project. Not a replacement or DIY version of a commercial product, but a clever and functional solution to a genuine need. Something that people both inside and outside of the maker community would want, and could replicate for themselves. So please join us in congratulating nestaflavio for landing the $1,000 store voucher, and the gold award!
Do go and visit Project Hub to check out the rest of the Arduino Cloud Games projects, all of which were of incredible quality. Which one are you going to make first?
A big part of the Oplà IoT Kit’s value comes from its online content. When you get the kit, one of the first tasks is to visit opla.arduino.cc, where a host of awesome resources are available.
And now it’s expanding on its usefulness by adding four new languages to the content.
Let’s Talk About the Oplà
The Oplà IoT Kit is a very powerful and fully featured learning tool. It’s also got everything an experienced maker needs for a connected project, of course, but if you’re new to Arduino the Oplà is a fantastic introduction.
The kit is supported by its very own website, which offers getting started guides for the bundled MKR IoT Carrier and for Arduino Cloud. The entire kit is all about building IoT projects, so the Cloud is an essential part of that, and it’s important to learn your way around it just as much as the hardware and sensors.
Project guides include a host of great ways to learn about the Oplà IoT Kit, from remote controlled lights to weather stations, security alarms and even a solar system tracker. So it’s easy to see how this online resource ramps up the usability of the kit significantly.
The good news is that it’s now even more useful, thanks to a range of new translations. French, German, Spanish and Italian speaking users can switch the entire Oplà site’s content into their native language. There’s a selector button in the top right corner of the screen that changes all the posts into your preferred language.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on it, especially from makers who speak these newly added languages natively. Anything we can do to improve, just let us know. In the meantime, grab your Oplà IoT Kit and dive into all that delicious multilingual content!
Being able to design your own custom smart home device is a great way to both have fun experimenting with various hardware/software and to escape the walled IoT device ecosystems that so many users find themselves trapped within. One maker who goes by mrdesha came up with a smart heater solution that utilizes the new Arduino Oplà IoT Kit to provide voice functionality to their room heater.
In terms of hardware, mrdesha’s project is quite simple as it just needs a few parts to function. The main component is the MKR IoT Carrier board from the Oplà Kit, along with the MKR WiFi 1010 that fits into it. Because the Oplà has two relays onboard, a pair of buttons on the heater’s remote were connected to the common (COM) and normally closed (NC) terminals, allowing for a single GPIO pin to digitally “press” each button.
Over in the Arduino Cloud, three variables were created that control various aspects of the heater, including on/off, set high-power mode, and set low-power mode. These variables are also all compatible with the Alexa integration, meaning that a user can simply tell their smart home speaker to adjust the heater automatically.
Create projects fast, with no coding, using Oplà IoT Kit templates
Arduino Team — July 30th, 2021
Templates are here for the Oplà IoT Kit. This is a new feature that takes you from unboxing your kit to uploading a sketch and getting a project up and running in record time. And you can do the whole thing without needing any coding.
Arduino Cloud Templates for Oplà IoT Kit
Arduino Cloud is all about ease and simplicity. So it’s been no small task in the background, creating a way to import dashboards, sketches, things and variables that get projects up and running in just a few clicks.
To kick things off, we’ve brought these templates to the awesome Oplà IoT Kit. This way, you have more options than ever before. You don’t need any coding skills at all to make a fully functional, connected IoT project. It’s the spark that will start the fire of your new passion for electronics!
Oplà IoT Kit Projects
The kit includes a host of projects so you can get started with IoT. These projects are carefully developed to create a strong foundation that lets anyone develop a working understanding of connected projects. Whether you’re teaching or learning, this kit is for you.
There’s still a lot of value in following these projects from start to finish, of course. Building control dashboards is one of the most powerful tools in the Arduino Cloud arsenal, for example. But there’s no quicker way to get started than importing a template. You can get to grips with things through pre-built, working demo content. Being able to see the finished project and work backwards is an excellent way to understand the inner workings.
There’s a super simple wizard that helps you import an Oplà IoT Kit project. It walks you step-by-step through the short process, creating and uploading the sketch, connecting the devices and adding a dashboard. It’ll connect your boards to Arduino Cloud and set them up automatically as you go.
Templates are ready and available for the following example Oplà IoT Kit projects:
Home Security Alarm
Inventory Control
Personal Weather Station
Remote Controlled Lights
Smart Garden
Thermostat Control
Thinking About You
Simply register your kit, and get signed up to the Arduino Cloud. If you’ve got a new Oplà IoT Kit there’s a free 12 month subscription included in the box, although you can do all this with the free Cloud plan too. Once you’re in, select the project you want to build with your Oplà IoT Kit. Then just click the “Import” button and follow the wizard as it takes you through the quick and easy process.
Do you like the new dashboard templates? Let us know if the comments where you’d like to see this Arduino Cloud feature go next.
Arduino MKR IoT Carrier: Control what you want, how you want to!
Arduino Team — February 24th, 2021
By popular demand, we are pleased to announce that it’s now possible to buy the Arduino MKR IoT Carrier. Originally forming a key part of the Arduino Oplá IoT Kit, we’ve responded to our community to make the carrier available on its own, thus enabling you to benefit from having a bunch of sensors, actuators, and a display all featured on the one board — making it quicker and easier to take your IoT projects to the next level.
Featuring a large set of built-in sensors and actuators as well as a useful color display, the carrier lets you focus on prototyping your IoT ideas right away by saving on the hassle of wiring and soldering these components.
The carrier can become a WiFi, LoRa, NB-IoT or GSM-compatible device by seamlessly connecting to any MKR family board. Building a user interface for these boards is easy with the embedded color OLED screen, five capacitive touch buttons, and the five RGB LEDs. The integrated sensors (temperature, humidity, pressure, RGBC light, gesture and proximity) allow you to map the environment around the carrier, and should you need to capture any other data there are over 100 additional Grove sensors that can easily be connected directly to the carrier.
Here’s are quick demo of the carrier’s capabilities! (Special shout out to Mirko Pacioni and Fill Connesso for creating this demo.)
Capture and store all the data locally on an SD card, or connect your MKR family board to the IoT Cloud for real-time data captured, storage, and visualization.
The MKR IoT Carrier features:
Round OLED display
Five RGB LEDs
Five capacitive touch buttons
On-board sensors (temperature, humidity, pressure, RGBC light, gesture and proximity)
Buzzer
IMU (Three-axis accelerometer sensor and three-axis gyroscope sensor)
Two 24V relays
MicroSD card holder (SD card not included)
Plug-and-play Grove connectors for external sensors — two analog and one digital (I2C)
18650 Li-ion rechargeable battery holder (battery not included)
The MKR IoT Carrier is now available to purchase from the Arduino online store for €48 / $57.60 — find infinite possibilities for all your IoT projects
Interested in learning how to build IoT projects, then we have the perfect choice of kits for you, both featuring the MKR IoT Carrier. The Arduino Explore IoT Kit is the ideal kit to learn about the Internet of Things and what you can do with it, while the Arduino Oplá IoT Kit is great for experiencing the benefits of IoT at home or in the office with eight out-of-the-box IoT projects controlled on the Arduino IoT Cloud.
Arduino Explore IoT Kit vs. Oplà IoT Kit: a detailed comparison
Arduino Team — November 18th, 2020
If you are looking for a solution to learn and experience the Internet of Things, there are two popular choices: the Explore IoT Kit and the Oplà IoT Kit. But which one should you pick? Here‘s a handy guide.
The kits share a very similar set of hardware and are in the same price range; moreover, they both offer a free one-year subscription to the Arduino Create MKR Plan, Arduino premium coding platform.
That is where the similarities end though! The Oplà IoT Kit is designed for individuals to use to add connectivity to the devices around the home or in the office, while the Explore IoT Kit is an educational kit developed for students to learn how to control objects remotely using digital dashboards and learn the fundamentals of the Internet of Things. Furthermore, they offer different online platforms and different projects — in other words, a completely different experience.
We’ve created a super simple guide to help you decide which is the right kit for you and your projects!
Both kits include:
And now, let’s explore what you can do with the Explore IoT Kit and the Oplà IoT Kit.
The Explore IoT Kit teaches you fundamental concepts to control objects remotely.
This educational kit includes 10 online student activities that adopt a learning-by-doing approach.
Step-by-step students will acquire knowledge by constructing fully functional solutions, including experiments, challenges, and building real-life applications. Students also learn to control objects remotely using a digital dashboard: the Arduino IoT Cloud.
The Oplà IoT Kit adds connectivity to your home, office appliances, and applications without the need for soldering.
This kit comes with a complete set of eight Internet of Things projects ready to turn everyday appliances into ‘smart’ appliances, e.g. a thermostat. More advanced users can create their own connected devices.
The two kits are currently available on the Arduino Store, priced at $114. Get yours today!
We’re excited to announce the launch of the Arduino Oplà Kit, the first open programmable IoT platform that allows you to add smart connectivity to the devices around your home or workplace and build custom IoT devices.
The Oplà IoT Kit contains all the hardware necessary to create eight connected applications, access to an online platform with assembly instructions, and a 12-month subscription to the Arduino Create Maker Plan. This kit is perfect for beginners with basic DIY experience, while more advanced users can leverage it to customize and hack their smart applications and devices, with full control of their data and processes.
Eight out-of-the-box projects to connect your home or workplace
The projects included in the Oplà IoT Kit enable users to turn everyday appliances into smart appliances, which can be controlled remotely on a mobile phone:
Personal Weather Station — Record and monitor local weather conditions
Home Security Alarm — Detect motion and trigger warnings
Solar System Tracker — Retrieve data from planets and moons in the solar system
Inventory Control — Track goods in and out
Smart Garden — Monitor and manage the environment for your plants
Thermostat Control — Smart control for heating and cooling systems
Thinking About You — Send messages between the kit and the Arduino IoT Cloud
Create, connect, control. The Internet of Things has never been so easy!
No soldering is required with the Oplà IoT Kit, which is based on a MKR IoT carrier with an OLED color display, on-board environmental sensors and capacitive touch buttons. The kit also includes a MKR WiFi 1010 board, a circular plastic enclosure and supporting accessories, such as two cables, a motion sensor, a moisture sensor, and a USB cable.
To build applications, users can rely on the Oplà online platform. Each project includes goals, an intro to the components, step-by-step instructions with illustrations and videos to guide you through assembling the product and building the code.
Finally, the kit acts as the physical interface of the Arduino IoT Cloud and comes with a 12-month subscription to the Arduino Create Maker Plan, offering unlimited compilation time and extended access to all the features of the Arduino IoT Cloud.
“When creating the Oplà IoT Kit, we wanted to design a platform that would allow anyone to gain a complete experience of what the Internet of Things has to offer around the home or workplace and I really believe we have achieved this. It is a great kit for users to build custom devices and enjoy being creative, no matter your level of experience,” says Arduino CEO Fabio Violante. “With this launch, we take yet another step towards lowering the barrier to entry for IoT development and cannot wait to see the projects created by users embracing connected devices both in their homes and at work.”
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