Arduino Cloud Promises a Hardware-Free Quickstart, by Turning Your Smartphone Into a Sensor Board

Arduino is aiming to bring new makers into its cloud platform fold by offering the chance to build a project without the need to pick up any new hardware at all — turning an existing smartphone into an Arduino Cloud-compatible device, including the ability to access various device sensors.

"Getting started with a new device management platform is a drag. You have to get familiar with the terminology and the environment. You have to create new devices, dashboards, widgets, and read a lot of documentation and that’s usually very time consuming, even if the platform is very easy to use," the Arduino team admits.

"Furthermore," the Arduino team continues, "it is even more tedious if the platform is targeted to manage physical devices. You need to have some devices close at hand, you need to learn how to code your 'hello world' or getting started examples and subsequent programming. Even if the platform is very intuitive, this is something that usually pulls users back."

The solution, Arduino proposes: making it possible to get started without the need to pick up new hardware, by making use of the supercomputer in your pocket. "What can be easier than using the tool that we use more extensively and handy: our mobile phone," the Arduino team asks. "Arduino Cloud has a feature called phone device that does precisely that. The goal is to provide the users with a tool that allows them to have a quick out-of-the-box experience with the IoT Cloud without the need of using a Cloud-compatible board."

Using the official Arduino IoT Remote App on Android or iOS, it's possible to link a smartphone to the Arduino Cloud as though it were any other Arduino-compatible device. In addition to appearing in the management interface, it also acts as a functional sensor board — providing access to internal sensors including the accelerometer, microphone, compass, barometer, and Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) positioning receiver.

"With this feature, there is a straightforward and simple path for those newbies who may want to know what they can do with the platform even without owning a compatible device," the Arduino team promises. "But it also enables makers, who may want to use their phone sensors to activate certain actions on their other things, to build more advanced use cases with Thing 2 Thing communication (for example, when my phone is near my office, turn on my AC)."

Details on how to get started using a smartphone in the Arduino Cloud are available on the Arduino blog.