The official Arduino development team has unveiled a new Arduino Cloud CLI tool this week to make most tasks possible when programming and developing on the Arduino platform possible using a web interface. Devices and things can be created, deleted and listed. Things can be bound to devices. In a very similar way it is possible to manage the dashboards. The Arduino team of also made it possible for OTA firmware updates can also be performed and allow users to defer the update for up to 7 days as well as making it possible to perform a mass OTA upload through a specific command if needed.
“The Cloud CLI needs a credentials file containing an Arduino IoT Cloud client ID and its corresponding secret. Credentials can also include an optional organisation ID that specifies the organisation to use. These credentials can be retrieved from the cloud by creating a new API key. One of the key features is the ability to download in different text formats (JSON, YAML, …) the templates of the dashboards, devices and things, so that you can keep them for future use. It is very useful to modify them to create copies of the entities with some properties changed and upload the new templates to the Cloud.”
Arduino Cloud CLI
The Arduino Cloud CLI is a tool that can be integrated easily in scripts and so, it is well-suited for scenarios where mass scale and automated actions are needed.
“The typical journey would consist of the following phases.
Phase 1: Prototyping
The user journey starts creating a first prototype of a Thing and a Sketch code that resolves the use case. This activity can be done using IoT Cloud web application, or even editing the Sketch in online Editor or offline Arduino IDE.:
Phase 2: Factory provisioning
At this point, the user can replicate the entire configuration of the “prototype” thing on many other devices, going through provisioning and connecting all of those to the cloud. In this phase, using Cloud CLI it’s possible to streamline the provisioning process and even to hook it to automation scripts.
Phase 3: Production update
During the normal life of a thing on the field, it is very typical to need to update the firmware remotely. With Cloud CLI, it is possible to update devices individually, but also many devices with a single command. Updates can be deferred if needed.
Phase 4: Dashboards (optional)
Dashboard creation would be the last optional step. The goal is to create custom dashboards that help us manage and monitor the deployed devices. Once the first dashboard is created in phase 1, it’s easy to replicate it for multiple devices with Cloud CLI.”
Source: New Arduino Cloud CLI tool unveiled
