This week, Internet of Things (IoT) company myDevices (division of Avanquest North America Inc.), developer of Cayenne (a drag-and-drop IoT project builder), announced a partnership with Adruino S.r.L., leading open source hardware and software ecosystem for embedded and microcontroller projects.

As a market, IoT is a rapidly growing industry that connects consumers, businesses and even industrial applications and crosses environments such as smart homes, smart cities, connected cars, and even manufacturing and agriculture. According to a Business Insider report the market is expected to spend almost $6 million USD on IoT solutions in the next five years and that there will be over 34 billion devices connected to the Internet by 2020.

Arduino produces hardware boards with highly flexible configurations that can include WiFi, Ethernet, Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE), Near Field Communication (NFC) and more network communication methods. These boards also contain microcomputing chips and other specialized processors to permit application-specific IoT development solutions that can connect sensors (for temperature, light, pressure, etc.), activate actuators (to turn on lights, change thermostats, open locks, etc.) and even display information.

Image courtesy of myDevices

When SiliconANGLE reported on the launch of myDevices Cayenne IoT development solution, it had been written for Raspberry Pi hardware boards—another good hardware producer for IoT and embedded projects. The solution allows developers to rapidly prototype IoT software projects by connecting together pre-built modules using a drag-and-drop visualization system to create easy setup.

By partnering with Arduino, myDevices adds a whole new ecosystem of open source hardware to its stable.

“We are especially excited about this partnership with myDevices since it easily enables Arduino users to create a clean graphical user interface that anyone can operate,” said Kathy Giori, VP Operations at Arduino.

A design-tool for bringing IoT developers to market faster

Cayenne’s graphical interface design works to abstract away the nitty-gritty of initial development and opens up developers to think about top-down design without needing advanced development from the start. This allows developers to visually storyboard how they desire an app to work and see how an app will function before spending the development time to fine-tune the advanced elements.

Giori added, “Giving developers the tools to build prototypes and products quickly, without having to learn advanced programming, makes it possible for engineers and entrepreneurs to take part in the booming IoT market. We’re seeing many projects turn into commercial business because of the democratization of these technologies. This partnership combines affordable hardware and intuitive software to help developers bring ideas to life.”

Cayenne Arduino-related features and functionality include:

• Drag-and-drop widgets to create a customized project dashboard;
• Sketch files provided to quickly and securely connect Arduino hardware;
• Visualize Arduino sensor data with minimal setup;
• Create triggers & alerts between different platforms (supports both Arduino and Raspberry Pi hardware);
• Ability to create widgets for any connected sensor or actuator.

Cayenne: a hot way to build projects for IoT

Cayenne has already seen a great deal of use in the past seven months, according to Kevin Bromber, CEO of myDevices, the platform has “just surpassed 4 billion IoT events on our platform utilizing features such as threshold alerts, sensor history and rules engine triggers.”

According to HexCorp, a product design consulting firm, a team using Cayenne to produce a simple IoT device using an Arduino Uno, a temperature sensor and an LED light finished the project six times faster than without the tool. HexCorp also noted that using the visualization tool helped eliminate at least 27 manual steps compared to a team building using a standard method.

“This release of Cayenne with Arduino support is yet another key milestone in our objective to expand availability,” said Bromber, “and eventually make Cayenne the industry standard for IoT project building, similar to how AutoCad is the de facto software for architects and 3D visualization.”

Developers interested in trying out Cayenne to experience these benefits themselves can sign up on myDevice’s website for a free account.

Featured image credit: Courtesy of Arduino, https://www.arduino.cc/