This is a project showing how to use EVRYTHNG to send data from a FiPy Pycom IoT device. In this example the FiPy sensor extension senses vibrations using an accelerometer and send this data to EVRYTHNG where it can be analysed to detect the type of appliance it is attached to.
The hardware used for the prototype:
More information on Pycom devices can be found here. You can find instructions how to work with and assemble the FiPy and Pysense hardware here.
Newly acquired devices might not contain the latest firmware from the manufacturer. As the use of the latest firmware is highly recommended, please follow the official guides to update FiPy and update Pysense.
There are two ways to upload python sources on a "fresh" device: using the Atom + Pymakr plugin or using FTP.
- Follow these instructions to install Atom + the Pymakr plugin, and setup device communication.
- Clone/download the project from GitHub and open it in Atom.
- Once communication with the device is established, press the "Upload" button on the Pymakr plugin panel.
- Press FiPy button to restart the device.
- Follow these instructions to connect FileZilla to the FiPy's internal FTP server.
- Copy all
.pyand.htmlfiles from the project folder to the/flashdirectory on the device, while making sure to maintain the same directory structure. - Press the FiPy reset button to restart the device.
Once the device is loaded with the latest source code and restarted, it is ready to be provisioned - i.e. receive cloud credentials and connect to a comminication network (WiFi/Sigfox/LoRa etc). As the internal web page is still in development the best way to do this is via the command line and curl utility:
- To set the EVRYTHNG cloud credentials:
curl -X POST 192.168.4.1/evt -d '{"thng_id": "<thing id>", "api_key": "<device api key>"}'
- To connect to WiFi:
curl -X POST 192.168.4.1/provision -d ‘{“ssid”: “<ssid>”, “type”: “wifi”, “passphrase”: “<passphrase>”}’
After this command the device will reboot, so make sure this is the last command.
- To connect to Sigfox:
curl -X POST 192.168.4.1/provision -d '{"type":"sigfox"}'
After this command the device will reboot and connect to sigfox network.
- Get the EVRYTHNG cloud credentials:
curl -X GET 192.168.4.1/evt
- Get the current network configuration (WiFi, Sigfox, etc.)
curl -X GET 192.168.4.1/provision
- Scan for WiFi networks:
curl -X GET 192.168.4.1/scan
- Get a list of available connectivity methods:
curl -X GET 192.168.4.1/connectivity
To put the device into provisioning mode press the button on the Pysense board for 3 seconds. The device will restart in provisioning mode, and the LED will start blinking blue.
While in normal operation, the LED will be solid green and the device will continuously read accelerometer sensor values. The device will enter vibration mode if the following conditions are true:
- The difference between the last reading and current reading of acceleration values on any axis is greater than a threshold of 0.04 (G).
- The time between exceedances of the threshold is less then four seconds and more then two seconds.
Simply put, if the device detects vibration for more then two seconds then it enters the vibration mode. The LED will turn solid red. If four seconds pass since the last exceedance of the threshold the device exits vibration mode, send magnitude data to the cloud, and set the LED to solid green. This simple algorithm allows the device to ignore spurious vibrations.
While in vibration mode the device sends vibration magnitudes of all three accerometer axes every minute and all other values on vibration mode exit or if the vibration lasts less then 1 minute. Magnitude data is stored in the magnitude property on the device's Thng in the following format:
[[0, -0.02294922, 0.002197266, 0.9916992], [0.0001508, 0.02099609, -0.01904297, 0.9971924], [0.4369363, 0.2623291, -0.1422119, 1.043335], ...]
It is a JSON array of arrays. Each array has a format of [timestamp, x, y, z]. The first array with timestamp 0 shows accelerometer readings before the first threshold exceedance was detected. The followings arrays have timestamps in fractions of a second since the vibration mode started. Only readings that exceed the threshold are recorded.
There is an internal mechanism for upgrading the firmware based on the EVRYTHNG Files API. The device continuously checks for a new version by reading the last _upgrade action from the cloud, compares it the local firmware version and performs an update if there is a newer version available.
The post-upgrade.py script can be used to create an upgrade bundle and to post an _upgrade action in the cloud in automatic mode. Do not forget to bump the version in version.py before launching the script. Run the post-upgrade.py script with the -h flag for more details.
While the device is upgrading itself the LED will blink red.