Feed Setup

If you do not already have an Adafruit IO account set up, head over to io.adafruit.com to link your Adafruit.com account to Adafruit IO.

The first step is to create a new Adafruit IO feed to hold the data from the PyPortal's temperature sensor. Navigate to the feeds page on Adafruit IO. Then click Feeds -> +New Feed and name this feed temperature.

You'll also want a second feed to store the value of the light sensor - create another feed named light.

Dashboard Setup

Next, you'll create a dashboard to display the values from the feeds you created.

From your dashboard, select the Gauge block. 

Select the temperature feed

In the Block Settings step, set the Block Title to Temperature, set the Gauge Min/Max Values to the upper and lower temperature thresholds you want to measure.

You can label the gauge by setting the Gauge Label - this example assumes temperature is to be measured in Degrees C.

Uncomfortably hot or cold? You can optionally set the gauge change color to warn you if the temperature goes above (or below) a certain value.

After adding the gauge element, your dashboard will look like the following:

Next, create another gauge block for the light feed:

While displaying the current values of the temperature is useful, Adafruit IO stores data so you can monitor how it changes a long period of time.

To do this, we'll use the Line Chart block - a block used to graph one or more feeds - and set it up to show both the light value and the temperature value over a long period of time.  

Create a new block and check the light feed, and then the temperature feed. You can select up to five different feeds to display using this block.

Your finished dashboard should look like the following:

You are also 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 for the next step.

This guide was first published on Feb 28, 2019. It was last updated on Nov 28, 2023.

This page (Adafruit IO Setup) was last updated on Feb 26, 2019.

Text editor powered by tinymce.