Obtain Adafruit IO Key

Adafruit IO is Adafruit's free internet of things data portal. If you do not have an account, navigate to https://io.adafruit.com/ and create one.

You will need your Adafruit IO username and secret API key.

Navigate to Adafruit IO and click the Adafruit IO Key button to retrieve these values. Write them down in a safe place, you'll need them later.

Create Group

This guide will use multiple Adafruit IO feeds to store sensor values. To organize these feeds, you will need to create a new group. 

Navigate to your Adafruit IO Feeds page.

Click Actions -> Create a New Group

Name the group sign-quotes. You can optionally set a description.

Click Create

Add Feeds to Group

Let's add a few feeds to the sign-quotes group to hold NeoPixel color and text. 

Click Actions -> Create a New Feed

Name the feed signcolor

Click Add to Groups and select the sign-quotes group

Click Create

Repeat the process in the step above to create a feed for signtext.

Before proceeding, make sure your Air Quality Sensor group looks exactly like the screenshot below.

Adafruit IO Dashboard

Dashboards allow you to visualize data and control Adafruit IO connected projects from any modern web browser. We'll be adding a text block to enter text and color picker to choose a color for the NeoPixels.

Navigate to the dashboards page on Adafruit IO. 

Click Actions -> Create New Dashboard

Name the dashboard My IoT NeoPixel LED Sign 

Click Create 

You should see your new dashboard pop-up in the list of Dashboards. Click the My IoT NeoPixel LED Sign dashboard link to navigate to the dashboard page.

You should see an empty dashboard. Let's fill it with blocks!

Click the '+' button on your dashboard to add a new block.

From the Create a New Block picker, click the Text Block

On the Choose Feed picker, select the signtext feed 

Under Block Settings:

  • Set Block Title to LED Text
  • Set Font Size to Large
  • Click Create Block

From the Create a New Block picker, click the Color Picker Block

On the Choose Feed Picker, select the signcolor feed

Name the block Text Color

Click Create

Organize Dashboard

You can drag the dashboard blocks around to re-organize your dashboard. 

Before moving on, make sure your dashboard contains the same blocks as the screenshot below

This guide was first published on Dec 15, 2020. It was last updated on Nov 30, 2020.

This page (Adafruit IO Setup) was last updated on Dec 11, 2020.

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