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IoT Using Raspberry Pi 3 and Thunderboard Sense

Last Updated on Monday, 06 March 2017 17:22

I am going to share with you something amazing using Silicon Labs Thunderboard Sense Kit, Thingspeak IoT Platform and My favorite Raspberry Pi 3.

Thunderboard Sense is tiny but Swiss Knife of Sensors. Trust me it is! It has Relative Humidity and Temperature Sensor, UV and Ambient Light Sensor, Pressure Sensor, Indoor Air Quality and Gas Sensor, 6-axis Inertial Sensor and MEMS Microphone including BLE capability.

Here I am going to show you how to get Temperature, Humidity and Battery Level data from Thunderboard Sense to Thingspeak through Raspberry Pi’s BLE and Internet connectivity. Check out this video.

Thunderboard Sense transmits all the Sensor values with its original shipped firmware. You can try to connect with it using following Thunderboard Android or iPhone App. It will shows all the Sensor values periodically.

Thingspeak is very easy to use platform. I have created my channel there with three fields. It gives you unique API key using which you can push data to cloud and on Thingspeak you can view the graph of your logged data. There is limit on it so you can push data once at every 15 seconds only.

As I want to read Battery Level, Temperature and Humidity, I have found out those three BLE characteristics first and then read it. It will read parameters at every 1 second from device and collect it and then after push to cloud at 15 second interval.

Here is the python code for Raspberry Pi 3 to connect with Thunderboard Sense Kit using BLE, Read data and push to Cloud.

from __future__ import division
import sys
from bluepy.btle import *
import struct
import thread
from time import sleep
import urllib2

PRIVATE_KEY = 'Your unique API Key Goes Here'

#Base URL of Thingspeak
baseURL = 'https://api.thingspeak.com/update?api_key='

def vReadSENSE():
	scanner = Scanner(0)
	devices = scanner.scan(3)
	for dev in devices:
		print "Device %s (%s), RSSI=%d dB" % (dev.addr, dev.addrType, dev.rssi)

		for (adtype, desc, value) in dev.getScanData():
			print "  %s = %s" % (desc, value)
	num_ble = len(devices)
	print num_ble
	if num_ble==0:
		return None
	ble_service = []
	char_sensor = 0
	non_sensor = 0
	bat_char = Characteristic
	temperature_char = Characteristic
	humidity_char = Characteristic
	count = 15
    
	for i in range(num_ble):
		try:
			devices[i].getScanData()
			ble_service.append(Peripheral())
			ble_service[char_sensor].connect(devices[i].addr,devices[i].addrType)
			char_sensor = char_sensor + 1
			print "Connected %s device with addr %s " % (char_sensor, devices[i].addr)
		except:
			non_sensor = non_sensor + 1
	try:
		for i in range(char_sensor):
			
			services = ble_service[i].getServices()
			characteristics = ble_service[i].getCharacteristics()
			for k in characteristics:
				print k
				if k.uuid=="2a19":
					print "Battery Level"
					bat_char = k
				if k.uuid == "2a6e":
					print "Temperature"
					temperature_char = k
				if k.uuid == "2a6f":
					print "Humidity"
					humidity_char = k
			
	except:
		return None
	while True:
		bat_data = bat_char.read()
		bat_data_value = ord(bat_data[0])
		
		temperature_data = temperature_char.read()
		temperature_data_value =(ord(temperature_data[1])<<8)+ord(temperature_data[0])
		float_temperature_data_value = (temperature_data_value / 100)
		
		humidity_data = humidity_char.read()
		humidity_data_value =(ord(humidity_data[1])< 14:
			f = urllib2.urlopen(baseURL + PRIVATE_KEY +"&field1=%s&field2=%s&field3=%s" % (bat_data_value, float_temperature_data_value, humidity_data_value))
			print f.read()
			f.close()
			count = 0
		count = count + 1 
		sleep(1)

while True:
	vReadSENSE()