Page 24 - Programming the Photon Getting Started With the Internet of Things

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Introduction to the Photon

In this chapter you will learn a bit about microcontrollers such as the Arduino as well as

the Internet of Things (IoT). The Photon board is a new development board based on its
predecessor, the Core, with some new hardware and software features that make it far
superior. We will take a look at all those features and compare both boards.

Microcontrollers

A microcontroller is essentially a computer that can control multiple inputs and outputs
using some form of programming language. Microcontrollers come in all sorts of shapes

and sizes, with the most popular platform being the Arduino. Arduino boards provide a
low-cost, easy-to-use technology to create small electronic projects. Modern conventional
microcontrollers can be connected to a computer using universal serial bus (USB) to
power the board as well as to program the microcontroller; however, they can also easily
be removed from USB once the program has been uploaded and powered using some sort

of portable battery device and work independently.

Other popular microcontrollers are the Raspberry Pi and BeagleBone boards. Both of
these boards are more advanced than the standard Arduino boards and have some video
output for connecting to a visual display with a basic operating system such as Debian.

These boards feature a vast array of hardware abilities, which can take your electronic
projects to another level by providing more storage, input/output pins, faster processing,
and audio/video output. All of these options are great, but when you need to connect your
projects to the Web, you almost certainly need extra hardware, such as shields or USB

dongles, and this adds considerable cost to your projects—sometimes more than the
microcontroller boards cost themselves. Some variations of boards do include built-in Wi-
Fi or Bluetooth technology, such as the Arduino Yun, but this board is still rather
expensive at more than $70; once you have added your electronic hardware and various

other costs, then your project can easily be in excess of $100.

So, What Is the Photon?

The Particle Photon is a single microcontroller development board much like the Arduino

Nano, with a small form factor but with the added feature of having a built-in Wi-Fi
module that you can control and program over the Internet using the Particle cloud. Once