Cloudino WiFi Connector
The Cloudino WiFi Connector, which is a little, inexpensive and powerful IoT Chip, that has preprogrammed the most common IoT protocols like a MQTT or the NGSI for the Orion Context Broker, that allows everyone to start sending information to the Cloud without any additional programming effort.
The WiFi Cloud Connector is based on the ESP8266 module and is one of the main component of the Cloudino Platform which allows you to connect any Arduino or Microcontroller to the Internet in simple way.
We can see the WiFI Cloud Connector as an IoT Router, where let us configure using a simple web browser, the internet settings as well as the IoT protocol that the chip will use.
An other important characteristic of the WiFi Cloud Connector is that can working in parallel with the Arduino, the WCC can be used as an Arduino Cloud Programmer, I mean, we can reprogram the Arduino via Cloud.
The WiFi Cloud Connector working with Arduino is not like an Arduino shield, is an other processor working in parallel dedicated only to the network layer including the IoT protocols, leaving the Arduino dedicated to the connectivity with the sensors and actuators, while allowing reprogramming Arduino via WiFi or Cloud.
The WiFi Cloud Connector can be used as we mention as an additional microcontroller dedicated to the network layer, working in parallel with actual microcontroller solutions like arduino. But also can be used as a stand alone device for directly communicate the real-life objects to the internet.
As we see in the diagram, the Wifi Cloud Connector has 11 digital GPIOs and only one analog GPIO, that we can use for connect sensors and actuator directly to the chip, without the necessity to add an Arduino and can be programmed using and JavaScript Engine that is working inside the chip.
If you want to make your own Cloudino Module you can start with:
- Simple Wifi Web Configuration (Access Point)
- Captive Portal
- Based on low cost ESP8266
- Arduino IDE Integration
- Wifi and Cloud Arduino Programming
- Built in IoT Protocols
- Cloudino Protocol
- Orion Context Broker (FIWARE)
- MQTT
- COAP
- mDNS Support
- JavaScript Interpreter
- Basic Authentication
- OTA Updates
- 32-bit RISC CPU: Tensilica Xtensa LX106 running at 80 MHz
- 64 KiB of instruction RAM, 96 KiB of data RAM
- External QSPI flash - 512 KiB to 4 MiB (up to 16MiB is supported)
- IEEE 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
- Integrated TR switch, balun, LNA, power amplifier and matching network
- WEP or WPA/WPA2 authentication, or open networks
- +19.5dBm output power in 802.11b mode
- Power down leakage current of <10uA
- 4MB Flash Memory
- 16 GPIO pins
- SPI, I²C,
- I²S interfaces with DMA (sharing pins with GPIO)
- UART on dedicated pins, plus a transmit-only UART can be enabled on GPIO2
- 1 10-bit ADC