Arduino's Oplà IoT Kit Aims to Give Your Home Appliances Smarts
New kit includes a MKR WiFi 1010 in a custom circular carrier board with a color display, touch points, sensors, relays, and more.
Arduino has officially launched the Oplà IoT Kit, which it describes as "the first open programmable IoT platform" designed to bring the Internet of Things to existing devices and appliances quickly and easily.
"When creating the Oplà IoT Kit, we wanted to design a platform that would allow anyone to gain a hands-on learning experience to fully understand IoT, and I really believe we have achieved this," says Arduino CEO Fabio Violante. "It is a great kit for users to build custom devices and enjoy being creative, no matter your level of experience."
"With this launch, we take yet another step towards lowering the barrier to entry for IoT development and cannot wait to see the projects created by users embracing connected devices both in their homes and at work."
The core of the Oplà kit is an Arduino MKR WiFi 1010 board, which is housed in a custom circular carrier boasting an OLED color display panel, five capacitive touch buttons, three Grove-compatible connectors, two relay connectors, a piezoelectric buzzer, microSD card slot, clip for an 18650 battery, an RGB LED, inertial measurement unit (IMU), temperature sensor, humidity sensor, pressure sensor, light sensor, gesture sensor, and proximity sensor.
The kit, which can be enclosed in a bundled transparent plastic casing, is programmed using a dedicated Oplà online platform with step-by-step guides for building a range of projects including remote-controlled lights, a weather station, home security alarm, solar system tracker, thermostat control, and a messaging system. Once users have grown beyond this, the hardware is fully supported by Arduino's IoT Cloud platform — and comes with a 12-month subscription at the Create Maker Plan level, offering unlimited compilation time.
The Oplà follows the release of the Arduino Explore IoT Kit earlier this year, which was again based on the MKR WiFi 1010 and which features a very similar, though not identical, circular carrier board with 18650 battery connector.
The Oplà is now available from the Arduino online store.