Feedback for the Arduino IoT Cloud team:
I bought some RP2040 Connect boards (I needed an onboard regulator capable of 12V, kudos on that!). Being a long time desktop user I decided to try Arduino Cloud so I could update firmware OTA in situ.
Getting started with cloud.arduino.cc is not intuitive. Getting a device connected to Arduino Cloud requires the "Secrets tab"... which I could not find from the "Thing" Sketch Tab. You have to open the "Full Editor"... but then you lose Device Status. I also couldn't see what was in thingProperties.h to know what that was about. For a first time device maybe point users to the "Full Editor" or else add a "Secrets" tab to the Thing Editor.
There is not apparent sans-serial onboarding out of the box. It would be great to be able to provision a device with no serial connection (and thus no "Arduino Agent" admin_privs_required installation). If there is wireless on-boarding it's not advertised.
Most disappointing of all was that after all the setup and getting an RP2040 Connect connected to the Arduino Cloud- the Cloud Icon & "Over-the-Air" at the top of the editor, I still couldn't test "Cloud Upload".
If there is one feature that will sell Arduino IoT Cloud devices it is wireless OTA Upload. You need to let people try it. If you must impose a limit on the free tier something like 5 per day would be enough. It should also be available in the desktop IDE, or by firmware upload. ...And what a great low cost value-add for board sales.
$2/month is not a a deal breaker, but I couldn't try it, I don't know if it works, I don't know how it works, I don't know how it handles failure and it doesn't seem to have a way to OTA upload firmware built on Desktop... so I didn't subscribe.
I would love to see Arduino IoT Cloud continue to grow and succeed, that said, I'm sure you're aware that you're not entering into a space without competition.
