Hi everyone, today we are going to learn about the Qubitro. Whether you are a student, beginner, or even working professional this guide is for you to completely understand the whole working, functionalities, and methods to learn and use the Qubitro and Qubitro platform.
Qubitro has lots of features and tools but we will try to cover some main topics like:
- What is Qubitro? and why do we use Qubitro?
- How to access and use the Qubitro Portal?
- What are the main features and tools that Qubitro provides?
- Which reputable organizations/companies are associated or partnered with Qubitro?
- Projects Part: How can we link our Internet of Things (IoT) or other projects with the Qubitro platform?
- and much more…
Before answering the above questions, there is one more topic that I need to cover before moving the first answer and that topic is IoT.
What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?
"The Internet of Things (IoT) describes the network of physical objects that are embedded with sensors, software, and other technologies for the purpose of connecting and exchanging data with other devices over the Internet."
1: Let’s start with our first question which is What is Qubitro? and why do we use Qubitro?
In simple words, Qubitro is a Device Data Platform (DDP), a platform that provides us with real-time data of our IoT devices, sensors, etc anytime and from anywhere around the world. Qubitro is the fastest way to build IoT applications with predictable pricing, developer-friendly features, and scalability. Qubitro is simplifying device data management with a rich and simple useful yet powerful scalable, customizable, and Future Ready device data platform.
Briefly, Qubitro, Inc. is a United States-based global company that “provides a platform for developers and businesses. It offers a distributed platform to enable customers to design and develop scalable IoT solutions without infrastructure setup or coding.” There is a tagline of Qubitro “One platform. Boundless possibilities”, which is 100 percent correct because there are endless possibilities we can explore and work on the platform of Qubitro.
Qubitro provides us with many learning resources on its website like Documentation, API Playgrounds, Tutorials, Blogs, and a Discord Channel for support and help.
For more info, you can visit here:
Qubitro Website
2: Let’s move to our next question which is How to access and use the Qubitro Portal?
Qubitro provides a simple User Interface we can easily access and use. To access the Qubitro platform, first, we need to go to Qubitro’s official website, we can simply type in the search engine “Qubitro” and then go to the website or type/click on this link to directly go to the website:
Qubitro Website
Then the Qubitro website’s homepage appears and we can then see all the information, docs, and other features on that screen. I would prefer you to explore the Qubitro website to understand Qubitro in a much better way. There is also a difference between the Qubitro website and the Qubitro Portal. To access the Qubitro portal we need to sign up and then log in to our account to access the Qubitro portal and then work on our projects or explore the Qubitro portal more in detail.
The account creation process is very simple, you only need a Gmail account, click on the Try Free button or Sign in button on the Qubitro website, and enter details like name, email, password, and country. There will be a confirmation email of the account received in our Gmail account and we then need to sign in. That’s it. Now we can access the Qubitro portal with the same credentials in the future.
3: The third question is about what are the main features and tools that Qubitro provides.
Generally, there are hundreds of features and tools that Qubitro provides to its users and we will look at some of them.
As we already discussed, Qubitro is a Device Data Platform (DDP) which means that “it is a platform that provides us with real-time data on our IoT devices, sensors, etc.” Qubitro provides us with a platform with all the possible solutions that are required to have for our IoT devices, and sensors to build our real-world projects or applications.
We can attach our physical IoT device or sensor like a temperature sensor, motion sensor, pressure sensor, or even others to our PC/Laptop, and then after some easy processes, we can check/view the device’s or sensor’s real-time data on our Qubitro platform. That sounds so interesting, right? Later on, we will also do it practically.
Qubitro also gives us the functionality of using languages like Python, Ruby, and others through which we can easily create a program and then link it with the Qubitro platform. For example, we can create a project like “Environment Tracker” through this method and then we can check the real-time data like temperature, humidity, etc of this project on the Qubitro platform.
Still confused about it? Don’t worry we will also do it practically.
Qubitro provides a very simple and easy-to-use interface to its users that makes Qubitro easier to understand. I described only two examples of Qubitro functionalities out of 100s and you can read the official documentation from the given link: https://docs.qubitro.com/platform
4: Which reputable companies/organizations are associated or partnered with Qubitro?
Well, we can see from the image below that Qubitro is partnered with reputable organizations from around the world. Qubitro also provides a Partnership program, and you can further explore it here: Qubitro Partners Page
Practical Implementation:
Finally moving to our last question which is the main topic of this story and what you are waiting for? How can we link our Internet of Things (IoT) or other projects with the Qubitro platform?
Now it’s time to explore the Qubitro practically with real-world examples. First, we will create a simple “Environment Tracker” project and then we will connect it with the Qubitro Portal to see the data.
Go to the official Qubitro website and click on the login button, add your email and password, and then the Qubitro Portal will appear.
On the portal, we can see some options like:
- Projects: where we can add, see, or find our projects.
- Dashboard: where we can add/see the Dashboard of our project. Basically, we can create customized dashboards to see our data in these accordingly.
- Credentials: where we can find our Webhook Signing Key, API keys, and External credentials. These keys may be different for all the users accordingly.
- Settings: where we can find our unique User ID and can change our details/information like name, password, timezone, etc. Also, we can see the billing and invoices section in the settings option.
Now if we want to add/create a project, first click on the Projects Tab and then select New Project. After that write a project name and description and then click on Create. Now we will see the project in the Projects Tab.
After that click on the project name, which will move us to the details of this project, now click on New Source. On the next page, all Data Sources or integrations will be shown like MQTT, 1NCE, Loriot, HTTP, and many others. We can select and integrate anyone of them.
I am going to choose the MQTT protocol, we need to just click on it, and then the next page will appear, now type any name of the data source, and then in the Tags section type the language name in which want to create/write a project like Python, Ruby, Curl etc. In the next fields which are Brand and Model, we can simply write “xx”. If we want to connect some physical device or sensor then we need to write its Brand name and its Model, otherwise write “xx”. In our case, we are now only creating/establishing a project that will be written in Python and connecting it with Qubitro Portal. After that write some description and click on Create.
Now the MQTT data source with our project “env tracker” has been successfully added and we can see it under the Devices Tab. Firstly it will show that we are “awaiting data” because we have not provided any data yet. So, for data to be sent and shown on this platform, we need to click on its name. Now, we can see the different Tabs on Top, which are:
- Overview: showing the details of the Data Source and Project.
- Data: history of the data which have to be received.
- Functions: add functions according to the project.
- Settings: where we can see the Unique ID of our project, tags, and other details.
Just click on the first tab which is Overview and then click on the Code Snippet. Here we can see the code in a language that we selected recently which is Python. We will now copy this code and paste it into the VS Code IDE or any modern IDE by creating a file with the extension .py. We also need the PAHO-MQTT python client library to be installed before executing or running this code.
See the details / Download/Install the Paho-MQTT from here:
PAHO-MQTT-Installation Guide
Great, so now we need to make some minor changes in our code. At the end of our coding file, we need to replace both the keys to some name like key1 to “Temp” and give it some value like 70 or something. Change the key2 to “Humi” and change its value to 30 or something, because here we need to find/see the real-time data of Temperature and Humidity in our project.
Now run this code in VS Code and open the Qubitro Portal Projects section to see our data. Click on the Project name and then click on the Data Tab. Here we will see all our data from time to time. There is also the option of s*aving/downloading data in CSV or Text format. We can further make more changes to our project like adding functions/rules from the Function Tab where we can select **Twilio, Slack, Webhooks,* and many others. We can also make some changes like after how much time data should be updated or anything we need. To stop this process of sending data to Qubitro, just press Ctrl+C in the terminal of VS Code to stop the program. So this was all about our first project, I hope you enjoyed learning and doing it. Perfect.
_Let’s move to our second project which is to see the real-time data of the physical device or sensor on our Qubitro Portal. That sounds interesting, isn’t it? Let’s do it practically.
_
So our previous project is already created and if we want to add another project we can do it, but if we want to use the same project with different settings and different functions we can also do the same which means the project will be the same but we will connect or integrate the physical device or sensor with it.
This time again click on the “env tracker” project *or click on New Project to create a new one. *Click on the “New Device” button and select any data source, this time I am again choosing the MQTT, again give it a name like “ESP client” or something, and this time we are going to connect our physical device with it, so write the ESP in the tag section and write the brand name and its model number in the next two fields. The device which we are going to connect, write its details here. Let's say I’m using the device brand name “Seeed Studio” and the device model number is “XIAO ESP32 S3." Give some description in the last section and click on the Create button.
After that, two devices will be shown in the Devices section one is Python (the previous one) and the second is the ESP client which we created just now. Now click on the ESP client and in the Connection details area we can see the_** unique Username and Password of our device**_, and this will be required for us to connect our device with Qubitro.
Before moving to the next step, we need 2 important things that we need to integrate our project into Qubitro.
**
The first one is the _Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE)**_, which we can download from here:
Arduino Download Page
The second thing is Qubitro mqtt-client-arduino, which we can get from the official GitHub of Qubitro:
MQTT-Client-Arduino
Just download this as a ZIP File.
Now install the Arduino IDE and open it, go to the sketch option from the top left of the Arduino IDE, and then click on include library, and then choose the same ZIP file as we just downloaded to our PC/Laptop. After installation is complete,** go to the file option from the top of IDE, select examples select QubitroMQTTclient. Inside it there will be a basic connection option, click on it, and our qubitro-mqtt-client will be enabled and we can now access it.** This sketch will work with most of the devices/sensors like ESP32, ESP8266 arduino, etc.
Alright, so after all these settings and creating a basic connection sketch, it is time to change the username and password here in the given sketch. I previously explained how we can get a username and password to establish a successful connection between the device/sensor and the Qubitro platform to see our real-time data. Just go back to the Qubitro platform, click on the Projects, and then click on the project name and choose an ESP device from here. In the Connection details area copy the username and password and paste both of them in the sketch code below the Credentials comment next to the Device ID and Device Token in Arduino IDE.
We can also change the device/sensor values from the given sketch in Arduino IDE according to the project whatever we want to get as a** minimum or maximum value and all other stuff we can do right here in the sketch according to our project. **So in Qubitro, we can only send the things or data as a JSON file. Maybe it will support other features as well in the future but for now, we can send the data in JSON format only. So, in the sketch file, we need to provide the payload data in JSON format only to see on the Qubitro platform. So now we are done with the Arduino settings and configurations. After that,_ we need to connect the physical device like ESP32 to our PC/Laptop using a cable/extension_.
The next thing is to go to the tools tab in Arduino IDE and find the port on which the device is connected. Select it and then click on the connect from the option on the left-right corner of the IDE. _This option will connect this sketch to our controller. Wait _for 2 to 3 minutes here until our connection is successfully uploaded.
After this, we need to go to our Qubitro Portal and see in the section of Device Data, where the real-time data according to our settings from the physical device will be showing to us. That’s what we’re waiting for, we not only see the history of data but can also do everything that we did in our first project like we can create functions, add features, widgets, tools, and dashboards, share your projects, and select someone as a contributor/collaborator and much more.
You can explore all these features. If you want details comment down below, I will be happy to share more details with you. That’s all from my side for our second project in which we learned how to link/connect our physical device/sensor with the Qubitro Portal to see the real-time data.
There are also prebuilt IoT projects and files that Qubitro provides us on GitHub, that we can use and customize accordingly and use them: Qubitro GitHub
Thank you so much for reading this. I hope it will be a helpful guide for you to start your first IoT project and connect or integrate it with Qubitro Portal.
Here are some helpful links to learn more about Qubitro:
Qubitro Website
Qubitro Twitter
Qubitro Medium
Qubitro LinkedIn
Qubitro YouTube
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