What's the best way to send IoT sensor data to Backendless?

Data Service
1

Hi.

We develop remote monitoring and control systems for RVs, caravans and boats. We are starting the process of building a smartphone app for out customers for them to view simple sensor data (ie. battery level, tank levels, temperatures, On/Off signals, Lat/Long position, etc). An example is below:

  • Name: Boat1
  • Epoch: 123563256
  • Longitude: -27.420137
  • Latitude: 153.16748086
  • Battery1Voltage: 12.4
  • Battery1Current: 5.4
  • Battery1Level: 56
  • Input1: 1256
  • Input2: 41338
  • Input3: 3351

We are embedded hardware developers and don’t have any experience with servers or smartphone apps.

Our hardware devices are connected to the internet via LTE Cat-M telecoms modules that only have the ability to communicate via, MQTT, raw TCP/IP packets, or GET/POST request to HTTP(S) server. So we would need to craft packets data from a very low level.

How would we go about sending this data into Backendless?

Do you have some sort of MQTT broker service, or are you able to send/receive to an MQTT broker?

Kind regards,

Andrew

2

Hi Andrew,

I would suggest you start with regular HTTP requests. So far, whatever you write doesn’t look like something they can’t handle. We have clients with very high-load applications and the Backendless does an excellent job.

Regards,
Stanislaw

1 Like
3

Hi Stanislaw.

Thanks for the reply. Can you please point me in the direction on where to find documentation on how to do HTTP and HTTPS requests to Backendless?

Andrew

4

Hi Andrew,

Here’s a documentation link for the API to save a record/object in the database:
Saving Single Object - Backendless REST API Documentation

Please let us know if you need any help or require any assistance.

Regards,
Mark

5

Nice, i am testing an IOT app with backendless and so far good. A concern for me arises because in the documentation says:
“Backendless server sets the maximum allowed value for the page size to 100 objects. The minimum value is 1. Default page size is 10”

That worries me because if i need do and API call to get 1000 records to plot a chart with timestamps in another platform i will get 100 points max? Is there a way to get all data at once or is there a method to get chunks and latter on put all toguether.

I am myself an embbeded developer too so i use only no-code platforms for this.

6

Hey there,

Im a hardware developer too. Are you still using backendless? or did you went into using an IoT platform to handle your data onthe cloud? So far im tinkering with backendless because i want to build my own Low-code-IoT platform (small steps at a time). I know i could use arduino cloud or ubidots to do this for me but i want my own server without going into the hassle of setup a node-red with databases and GUI in a linux machine.

Would be nice to hear about your proejct too

7

Hello @Jaime_Isaac_Bojorquez_Guerrero,

You can use Data retrieval with Paging to retrieve more than 100 records.
Please take a look at this documentation.

Regards,
Olha