Intro: Connecting Nicla Sense ME to AWS

This is the first article of a series I will be publishing in my pursuit to save some money on energy (hello 9% increase in the cost of living!), by using a really cool sensor connected to AWS, feeding a machine learning model to figure out how can we reduce our energy bills by Winter.

Nicla Sense ME is my favorite Arduino board at the moment.

It is a low-power, tiny board (2.2cm x 2.2cm) that uses Bosch Sensortec technology with AI edge computing capabilities.

You can find it in the Arduino store for €69.00 if you are in Europe and $82.80 in the US.

It combines 4 industrial-grade sensors:

• BHI260AP — Motion with embedded AI
• BMM150 — Magnetometer
• BMP390 — Pressure
• BME688 4-in-1 Gas Sensor with embedded AI, Humidity, and Temperature

It can measure:

• Rotation
• Acceleration
• Pressure
• Humidity
• Temperature
• Air Quality
• CO2 Levels

Before going any further, I must say that using this board is a bit overkill for our project, as we are only interested in Temperature and Humidity data. But since I had bought this sensor already, we might as well use it.

It has BLE connectivity and can be powered via micro USB or a 3.7V Li-po battery.

You can find the Datasheet here.

This board cannot be connected directly to AWS as it doesn’t have WiFi connectivity, so we will be developing a custom-made application using python, which can be deployed later using, for example, a Raspberry Pi.

An overview of what we are going to use/do:

Toolset:

• Arduino IDE (1.8.19)
• Python (3.10.5)
• Visual Studio Code IDE (1.69)
• Git (2.37.1)
• Powershell (7.2.5)

Libraries:

To manage the code:

• pyenv-win: A python version management tool
• venv: For creating the virtual environment
• black: A python code formatter
• pylint: A code analyser for python
• python-dotenv: To load environment variables from .env file

For the application:

• pySerial: Access for the serial port
• bleak: A client software, to connect BLE devices
• awsiotsdk: SDK for connecting to AWS IoT from a device using Python

Interfaces:

• Arduino→Serial→PC
• Arduino→Bluetooth→PC
• PC→MQTT→AWS

Keep an eye for the next article, detailing how we got things ready and connected the Nicla Sense ME board to AWS!