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3. Open a ThingSpeak account

ThingSpeak is a free Internet of Things service that stores and displays data received from your weather station. ThingSpeak integrates support for MATLAB software from MathWorks, allowing you to analyze and visualize your station’s data using MATLAB without requiring the purchase of a MATLAB license.

A ThingSpeak account is needed for the weather stations kits. It is not needed for the D1S Display kits.

Steps to open an account

  1. Open thingspeak.com in your browser.
  2. Click “Get Started For Free” and follow the instructions on the ThingSpeak website to set up MATLAB and ThingSpeak accounts.
  3. Sign in to your account and click Create Channel.
  4. Choose a channel name and description.
  5. Enter field definitions as shown in the table below and check the box beside each field to make it active.
  6. Check Public to make it easy to access during setup and testing. It will be available to everyone but you can change it to Private later.
  7. You may wish to show the location of your station on a map. This is optional. Find the geographic coordinates and elevation of your station at https://www.freemaptools.com/elevation-finder.htm For example, the location of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC is 38.8893, -77.0502. The elevation is 26.0 m. Enter this information in the ThingSpeak form as 38.8893 (North latitudes are positive) and -77.0502 (West longitudes are negative!)
  8. Check Show Location if desired.
  9. Check Show Status.
  10. Click on Save Channel.
  11. Click on the API Keys tab and record your API Write Key and ChanneID on a piece of paper or somewhere you can retrieve it.

Iot Kits Weather Station Field Definitions

Field 1TemperatureC
Field 2Humidity
Field 3Time Awake
Field 4Sea Level Pressure
Field 5Light Intensity
Field 6Cell Voltage
Field 7RSSI
Field 8TemperatureF

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