If you do not want to host your own MQTT broker, using Adafruit IO's MQTT broker is a great way to get started connecting your CircuitPython project to the internet. Best of all - it's free to use!

You're going to build an Adafruit IO Dashboard which can visualize incoming data from your CircuitPython board, and send data to it.

Obtain Adafruit IO Username and Key

If you have not already, sign up for an Adafruit IO account by clicking this link. 

Next, you're going to need your Adafruit IO username and secret API key.

Navigate to your profile and click the View AIO Key button to retrieve them. Write them down in a safe place, you'll need them later.

Create Adafruit IO Feeds

Adafruit IO uses a special type of MQTT Topic named a Feed to store data along with metadata (information about the data). You'll be publishing data to one feed, and subscribing to another.

Create an Adafruit IO Dashboard

Adafruit IO Dashboards are a way to interact with feeds. You can link blocks on dashboards to your feeds. The blocks can either display information about the feed (such as the current temperature) or allow you to interact with a feed by setting it to different values.

Start by creating a new dashboard. Name it whatever you'd like!

• If you do not know how to create a dashboard, head over to this page and come back here when you've successfully created a dashboard.

Your dashboard should look like the following: