Arduino IoT Cloud Gets Secure Variable Sharing for Easy Machine-to-Machine Communication

The Arduino team has updated its Arduino IoT Cloud platform with a feature many have been requesting since its launch: simple machine-to-machine (M2M) communication between Arduino devices.

"There’s a brand new device-to-device communication feature now available in the Arduino IoT Cloud. It’s something we’ve been working on for a long time," the team explains in the feature announcement. "It will allow your Arduino devices to send wireless messages to each other, without writing a single line of code or spending time with radio modules and network protocols."

"Using this feature you can link variables of the same data type between two or more cloud-enabled devices. For example, one button could set three smart bulbs to the same color. Or you could turn on a heater when temperature sensors in your room or outside in your weather station drop below a certain level. Being able to sync variables gives you an intelligent way to control multiple devices very easily."

Compatible with any Arduino board which supports the Arduino IoT Cloud — including the Arduino Nano RP2040 Connect, the company's first device built around the RP2040 microcontroller Raspberry Pi launched earlier this year — the feature means that a variable changing on one device is reflected on all other synchronized devices with the Arduino IoT Cloud platform itself handling all authentication and cryptography work invisibly to the user.

"What does this mean for your projects and devices," the team asks. "It means there are lots of options with thing-to-thing communication (also known as variable synchronization): Collect sensor readings from remote devices; actuate devices remotely. For instance, pressing a button on one Arduino turns on an LED or motor on another; create a distributed algorithm where multiple devices collaborate with each other."

More details are available in the launch announcement, while the feature is now live across all Arduino IoT Cloud accounts.