In this tutorial, we are going to connect ARIES IoT v2.0 Board to Adafruit IoT cloud platform with the help of WiFi Nina module. The built-in LED in ARIES board is controlled from the data sent from the Adafruit cloud platform.

Aries IoT v2.0 Board

The ARIES IoT is a fully indigenous and a “Made in India” product to get started with basic microprocessor programming and embedded systems. This board is built upon a RISC-V ISA compliant VEGA Processor with easy-to-use hardware and software. For more details about ARIES IoT boards please refer to the ARIES development boards and Ecosystem.

WiFi NINA

The Wi-Fi NINA module on the ARIES IoT v2.0 Board provides reliable wireless connectivity, enabling the board to connect to Wi-Fi networks and communicate with cloud platforms, web servers, and IoT services. Based on the u-blox NINA series wireless module, it supports secure internet communication and simplifies the development of IoT applications such as remote monitoring, sensor data logging, and device control. The module interfaces with the ARIES processor through SPI, allowing seamless integration of wireless networking features into embedded projects.

Prerequisites

• Windows 10 or above/Ubuntu 20.04 LTS or above
• Arduino IDE
• VEGA ARIES Board support package

Components Required

• ARIES IoT v2.0 Board
• USB type C Cable

Circuit Diagram

No external connections required to test this code. You can directly connect Aries IoT board through USB and upload the program.

Libraries

Arduino libraries are an extension of the standard Arduino API and consists of thousands of libraries, both official and contributed by the community. Libraries simplifies the use of complex codes. Every version of Arduino IDE has a library manager for installing Arduino software libraries. The libraries required for this projects are

VEGA_WiFiNINA (Version 1.0.1)

To install the libraries directly from library manager required for this project:

Go to Tools -> Manage Libraries -> and search with the library names mentioned above

Click on Install

Procedure

ADAFRUIT IO SETUP

We have to configure the Adafruit IO cloud server before uploading the program to ARIES microcontroller.

Follow the below steps for configuring Adafruit IoT cloud platform

• SIGN UP on Adafruit from Adafruit IO if you doesn’t have an account. If you have Adafruit account use SIGN IN option and login with your credentials.

Click on Feeds menu

Once the feed menu is opened, Click on New feed

Create a new feed by giving any feed name. Here we have used “onoff” as the feed name. You can give any feed name and Click on Create

Now you can see the feed has been created as follows.

Now click on Dashboards menu

Click on New Dashboard for creating a dashboard

Give any Dashboard name you like. Here we have given “onoffdash” as dashboard name and click on Create

Now you can see the dashboard has been created as follows.

Click on the Dashboard name you created, to open the dashboard. Once you enter inside the dashboard you created, you can see a black page as follows. Click on the New Block option.

• This will open up a menu as shown in the below figure. Click on Create New Block

You can see the available blocks to display the data. Here we will be using the Toggle block to display the random data coming from the ARIES micro-controller. You can also use line chart or text display or any other blocks based on your requirements.

• In the next step, Tick Mark the checkbox to link your feed with the dashboard and click on NEXT STEP

Give a block title for your selected block. Give Button On value as “1” and Button of value as “0” and click on Create Block. Remaining fields are optional in this block.

Now the block has been created.

Click on the yellow key icon to Copy the Adafruit API key (Active Key) to replace the key in the Arduino code.

Click on feed -> Feed info. Copy the MQTT key to replace in the URL portion in the Arduino code

Now you need to change the Credentials in Arduino program

Setup VEGA Ecosystem

Download and install Arduino IDE 2.3.10

Once installed Open Arduino IDE

Open File->Preferences, Add below JSON in “Additional Boards Manager URL”, Press OK

https://gitlab.com/riscv-vega/vega-arduino/-/raw/main/package_vega_index.json

Open Tools->Boards->Board manager, Search for “vega”

Install “VEGA ARIES Boards” with latest version

Select ARIES IoT Board from Tools -> Board -> VEGA Processor: ARIES Boards -> ARIES IoT

Check your ARIES board whether the BOOT SEL pin is shorted using a jumper or not.

If
BOOT-SEL jumper (J12) is shorted :
Select Tools -> Upload method -> VEGA FLASHER
Else
Select Tools -> Upload method -> VEGA XMODEM

Here the BOOT SEL pin is shorted, so we have selected VEGA FLASHER from Upload method

Also select appropriate port from Tools -> Port -> COM* (ARIES Board) for windows and dev/tty/USB*(Aries Board) for ubuntu

Now, Open Files -> Examples -Under Examples for ARIES IoT -> VEGA_ARIES_IoT -> WiFi-> IoT_GetDemo

Change the credentials on the code as shown in the image

Once the hotspot name, hotspot password, KEY and URL has been replaced with your’s, the procedure is completed.

Finally Upload the code to ARIES IoT board

Output

You can open the dashboard you created in Adafruit to change the real time data in Adafruit server as shown in the below images. In the example program given, we are changing the toggle led button in Adafruit server to ON and OFF. When the Toggle led button is ON, the internal LEDs in the ARIES board will turn on, and when the Toggle LED button is OFF the internal LEDs in the ARIES board will turn OFF.

Output from ARIES IoT v2.0 board when LED button in Adafruit cloud is turned to OFF condition

Output from ARIES IoT v2.0 board when LED button in Adafruit cloud is turned to ON condition