To view data from the FONA808 shield on Adafruit IO, first make sure you have access to the Adafruit IO beta (if you don't have access yet, a great way to get an invite is to show off a fun internet of things-related project on the weekly show & tell show).

Next you'll want to familiarize yourself with Adafruit IO by checking out the guides in this Adafruit IO series, in particular:

Then make sure you've assembled and run the FONA808 version of the sketch from the previous page.  Once the hardware has run for a bit there should be data populated in Adafruit IO and you can build a dashboard to view it.

To build the dashboard, start by navigating to Adafruit IO at:

http://io.adafruit.com/

You should see a welcome dashboard like the following:

Click My Dashboards in the upper left to go to the main Dashboard page:

Now create a new dashboard by clicking Create Dashboard in the upper right:

Give the dashboard a good name like 'Track Your Treats', then click Create Dashboard:

The new dashboard will be empty, however you can click New Block in the upper right to add a map block:

Scroll down to the map block and click Create:

Once the feed list loads you want to find one of the feeds created by the sketch.  By default the project uses two feeds:

  • treat-path - This feed stores the regular location updates (every 15 seconds) so you can see the full path of trick or treating that you followed.
  • treat-good-candy - This feed only stores locations where the button was pressed, i.e. houses that had good candy.

Let's start by creating a map block for the treat path.  You can scroll down to find the treat-path feed, or type in treat-path to the search bar to filter to just that feed to find it:

Click the Choose action to select the treat-path feed for this map block, then click Next Step to configure the block:

Give the block a good title like 'Candy Path', and then put in a large value for the hours of history, like 9999.  Right now the map block is made to display recent location data so putting in a large value like 9999 will display all the map data regardless of how old it is.  In the future there could be new options to simplify showing all map data, but for now use a large value if you want to have the data visible on the map for a long time.

You can also change the map style from high contrast to satellite or other map views.  High contrast looks great on the dashboard so we'll stick with it for now.

Click Create Block to add the new map block to the dashboard:

You can resize and reconfigure the map by going into edit mode.  Click the Edit button in the top left and notice the block changes slightly to show more options:

You can click the trash can in the upper right corner of the block to delete it.  Or click the gear icon next to the trash can to go back to the block configuration and change its title, hours of history, etc.

When you mouse over the block you will see a resize icon in the lower right corner of it.  Grab the icon with the mouse and drag it out to resize the block:

Once you've finished resizing and editing the block click Done Editing in the upper left to save the changes.

Now let's add the good candy location as another map block on the dashboard.  Just like before click New Block to create a new block.  This time select the treat-good-candy feed (make sure you've run the hardware and pressed the button a few times to have this feed created and populated with data):

Configure this good candy map with a title like 'Good Candy', and again put a large value like 9999 for hours of history.  Then click Create Block to add the block to the dashboard:

Resize the good candy map block just like you resized the path block.  You can fit both maps on the dashboard to have a nice view of your full trick or treat path, and the houses that had good candy:

An awesome feature of Adafruit IO is that dashboards will update in real-time as data is added to the map.  This means you and your friends & family can watch the treat path update as you walk around collecting candy.  The periodic location updates and the good candy location button presses will pop onto the dashboard as they occur.

If you'd like to make the dashboard public so other people can view it, click the lock icon in the upper right to unlock the dashboard and make it public.  Then you can copy the URL from the browser and send it to someone else to view.

Congratulations on building the track your treats candy tracker with the FONA808 shield & Adafruit IO!  Use the data you learned to help improve and optimize future trick or treat runs for maximum candy acquisition!

This guide was first published on Oct 12, 2015. It was last updated on Mar 16, 2024.

This page (Adafruit IO) was last updated on Oct 09, 2015.

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