SIGNL4 Integration with Particle

Particle is a fully-integrated IoT platform that offers everything you need to deploy your IoT product, including hardware, software and connectivity. You can monitor sensors or environmental data in the field, do asset tracking, preventive maintenance, gather machine data or use it to improve your supply chain management. Pairing this powerful IoT platform with SIGNL4 can enhance your daily operations with an extension to your team on the shop floor or in the field.

In our example we integrate a Particle Photon device with an IR motion sensor and a temperature sensor. Whenever a motion (e.g. an intruder) is detected we send an alert to our SIGNL4 team.

SIGNL4 is a mobile alert notification app for powerful alerting, alert management and mobile assignment of work items. Get the app at https://www.signl4.com.

Particle Setup

Prerequisites

A SIGNL4 (https://www.signl4.com) account
An Particle (https://console.particle.io) account
A Particle Maker Kit (https://store.particle.io/collections/shields-and-kits)

In our case we use the Particle Maker Kit with a Photon device to connect an IR motion sensor ans a temperature sensor. We also use an LED to indicate the motion detection directly on the device.

Particle Devices

You can see the assembled device on the image above. You can find a good description on how to connect the sensors here: https://docs.particle.io/tutorials/hardware-projects/maker-kit.

Now you can connect your device to the Particle IoT platform. This is easily done by using the Particle app. You can find a full description here: https://docs.particle.io/quickstart/photon.

Now you can see your new device in the Particle Console under Devices: https://console.particle.io/devices.

In the Particle Console under Integrations (https://console.particle.io/integrations) you can now create a new Webhook in order to send alerts to SIGNL4.

You can create a new Webhook and then use the SIGNL4 webhook URL.

Particle Webhook 1

The {team-secret} is your SIGNL4 team secret.

Under Custom Template you can insert your JSON data template as to be sent to SIGNL4.

{
    "event": "photon-motion",
    "deviceID": "37002a000847373336323230",
    "url": "https://connect.signl4.com/webhook/{team-secret}",
    "requestType": "POST",
    "noDefaults": true,
    "rejectUnauthorized": true,
    "json": {
        "subject": "{{{subject}}}",
        "temperature": "{{{temperature}}}"
    }
}

Particle Webhook 2

You can now go to the Web IDE at https://build.particle.io/build to deploy the code to your device(s).

The two main lines to send the SIGNL4 alert are the following.

String data = "{ "subject": "Motion detected.", "temperature": "" + temperature() + "" }";

Particle.publish("photon-motion", data, 60, PUBLIC); 

First, we assemble the date to become part of the webhook JSON data. And second, we send the date to the “photon-motion” Webhook we have created above.

This is it. You can now test your IoT scenario by simulating a motion. You will then receive an alert in your SIGNL4 app.

You can find a sample in GitHub:
https://github.com/signl4/signl4-integration-particle

The alert in SIGNL4 might look like this.

SIGNL4 Alert