Environmental Monitoring with the Tessel 2
rwaldron 
Introduction
Phant is No Longer in Operation
In the world of tomorrow, everything in our homes will be connected. The Internet of Things (IoT) is the real-world manifestation of that vision. The world of IoT includes network-connected appliances that have not, until now, had any such sophisticated capabilities.
The Nest product line, which started with intuitive smart thermostats and is expanding into other products, is one set of offerings in a growing market of so-called "smart home" offerings. Amazon's Echo, which combines several home integration aspects into a single platform, is another.
Our Own Smart Monitoring Device
There are many types of smart-home systems. Some remotely control a home device, like automatically turning lights on or off at certain times. Others optimize the behaviors of home systems, perhaps switching a home's electrical supply between solar and grid power at different times of the day or season.
In this tutorial, we'll hone in on the monitoring aspect of smart systems. We're going to build an air-conditioning monitoring device to collect information and store it in the cloud.
Our monitoring device will be able to detect the following over time:
- Whether the air conditioner is ON or OFF
- Temperature
- Relative humidity
- Air pressure
Data points from the sensors in the device will be uploaded to and stored in Sparkfun's Phant-powered data.sparkfun.com service.