Features of the Arduino IoT Cloud

Beside “bridging” between devices, the Arduino IoT Cloud provides a lot of useful features:

• Dashboard: A user interface to monitor and control multiple devices without writing a single line of code. You just drag and drop elements (like, for example, a slider, a button or a gauge indicator), select variables from different “things” and, in less than no time, you have a working dashboard.
• Automatic code generation: When you define the basic characteristics of a “thing” through a web interface, you press a button and you get the whole sketch written for you with sophisticated logic to manage the connection to the cloud. What’s left to do is add the code that reads data from sensors and send data to actuators. The rest of the work of communicating with the cloud is managed automatically from the code Arduino generates for you. All of this is in the Arduino Cloud Web IDE where you edit your sketch without leaving the browser.
• Data Logging: The Arduino Cloud has the ability to store the historical value of certain variables so you can check how some quantity changed over time and analyse the data further.
• Mobile App: There is a free mobile app that lets you interact with your devices with your smartphone.
• Node-RED Integration: Node-RED is a popular visual programming tool used by many people to automate their smart home. Arduino Cloud provides a free “node” that lets you use Node-RED to interact with your devices and integrate them in complex automations, connecting with hundreds of different APIs.
• Webhooks: You can instruct the Arduino Cloud to send the current state of a device to a certain URL every time the data changes. This allows you to integrate the Cloud with services like IFTT, Zapier, or Google Apps
• API: If you know how to program with languages like Python or Javascript, you can build applications that interact with the Arduino Cloud through its API.
• Alexa Integration: the Arduino Cloud can talk to an Amazon Alexa smart speaker and lets you control your devices with voice commands.

You can find more detailed information at https://cloud.arduino.cc.