IoT Cloud

An IoT Cloud is an online service that can act as a bridge between your connected devices and, for example, a mobile app, a web dashboard or even other devices. If you have an IoT-compatible Arduino or similar board, the IoT Cloud service will detect when it is connected.

However, if you are using a non-IoT-compatible board like a standard Uno, you’ll get the following message, so make sure you select the right board for your IoT project.

Let’s say you just built a device that allows you to deliver a little treat for your dog and you want to control it with your smartphone. One thing you can do is use an Arduino with WiFi, develop a sketch that can implement a simple web server (you can find tons on the internet), and when the device connects to your home WiFi, you can control it with your phone or computer.

Now if you leave home and, say, go shopping, you’ll find that you can no longer connect to your device because any connection to it coming from outside is blocked by your firewall. The firewall is usually one of the bits of software that run on the internet router/access point provided by your internet provider. Its job is to let your devices (your computer, tablet, phone, smart thermostat, etc.) connect to the internet from inside your home while blocking any connection initiated from the outside. This is super important to protect your home, your devices and your personal life from malicious “hackers”.

While it’s technically possible to open a “hole” in the firewall to allow one specific connection to reach one specific device, it’s actually quite cumbersome and each “Access Point” does it in a different way, so the best way to solve this is to use an external service which receives connection from all of your devices spread across the world and lets them talk to each other. This is where the IoT Cloud comes in.