Hi there. I've been using ThingSpeak for years to test IoT devices I'm building with Arduino, Wemos, and MkrFox boards, but I would like to hear from other users what other platforms you are using and would advise for a real project with a customer.
Thingspeak offers free accounts for <15sec periodic updates, but basically the default representation for the information is "needle gauges" and historic charts. Other than that you need to use your own functions and code to provide other graphic representations, and the license to start using it for commercial purposes starts at $600/year. Both with a free or commercial license you can share your channels with everyone or with an specific (free or commercial) user. But shared channels only show the histogram view, not the custom applications.
Is there any other platform, which is free to test, and affordable to license, that offers a more friendly interface and visualization options?
Yes, I actually found about the 1 channel gateway 2 days ago, but I read in several forums, in particularly in one entry on thethingsnetwork itself, that the 1 channel gateway is highly disencouraged to be built and added to thethingsnetwork as providing service on a single channel is totally infringing the network standards
I was very tempted to try one as in my city there are....ZERO lorawan gateways. And a true gateway with a IC880A multichannel LoRa module runs over $200
And for what I understand, thethingsnetwork provides the connectivity level to devices to the internet, but that's it, unless I'm missing something. I don't think they provide the cloud itself (DB to store readings, ways to visualize them, alarms, etc)
if there are no local Lora gateways a single channel gateway would be used to evaluate the system
if sucessful one could then move a iC880A concentrator or similar product
Yes my intend was to try the LoRa protocol in my area, but the article I read about using the 1-ch gw was really discouraging, I would totally like to try one out.
I am currently prototyping with Sigfox, not that you linked to a comparison webpage. I like it so far, but LoRa provides the ability to work with no license at all specially when you have several distributed sensors in a large area
I had already seen another tutorial to build a single channel LoRA gateway but using a wemos board instead of a Rasp-PI (even cheaper), and with a 0,96" tiny OLED on top to monitor it
if you do a web search Lora vers Sigfox or similar you will get plenty of links
I think it is a question of looking at the system requirements specification and finding a communications technology which supports it, e.g. can Lora, Sigfox, etc support the traffic required?
At the moment I still tend to use GSM modems as a well proven technology
I think something was not understood here.
LoRa is a communitation way. SigFox is a provider that uses another LoPaWan technology. None of them stores anything. In SigFox (which I already use) you need to tell the backend what to do with every message you send to it. In my case I have a callback that forwards the data to Thingspeak, but Sigfox doesn't store or let you visualize your date. The same way your provider's GSM network will let you send the data thru them but you still need an end point where to put the data
What I'm looking for is a cloud service, like ThingSpeak, an alternative.