Arduino Announces a Faster, Simpler Wi-Fi Provisioning Flow for Its Cloud Platform

The Arduino team has announced an overhaul to how devices can be connected to a network and joined to the Arduino Internet of Things (IoT) Cloud, unveiling a new provisioning flow that is available first on the Arduino UNO R4 WiFi development board.

"Provisioning is the process of securely registering your Arduino board to Arduino Cloud and connecting it to your Wi-Fi network. It's basically the very first step to getting your device online and ready to use," the Arduino team explains. "And we've just made that process a whole lot easier from the moment you open the box. Power your board, use the Arduino IoT Cloud Remote app and let Bluetooth do the work."

Provisioning has long been a challenge for developers working on IoT projects: it's easy enough to stick your credentials in your firmware when you're deploying a single design on your own network, but once you're looking to send the hardware far and wide you need an easy way for recipients to connect it up to their networks — without having to send them a copy of your firmware source and instructions on recompilation and flashing.

The most common approach for Wi-Fi-enabled devices is a "captive portal" — a hotspot that gives the user access to a configuration page, then is disabled when the device connects to the freshly-configured network. The new Arduino provisioning flow, though, takes a different approach: just power a compatible microcontroller board up, fresh out of the box and tap the "Add a device" option in the Arduino IoT Cloud Remote app to find and configure the device over a Bluetooth connection.

At the time of writing the new flow was only active for users of the Arduino UNO R4 WiFi, and only new-stock devices at that, though more hardware is expected to follow in the near future. It also comes with a three-month subscription to the "Maker" tier on Arduino Cloud, the company has confirmed.

Those interested in trying the new flow will need a brand-new Arduino UNO R4 WiFi and a copy of the Arduino IoT Cloud Remote app, available for Google Android and Apple iOS/iPadOS.