This Internet connected LED matrix keeps it simple by using a particle photon microcontroller and webhooks to control it. The particle photon is a WiFi based development board that has the added advantage of access to particle cloud based services. These cloud services mainly make it easier to interface with hardware devices over the Internet. One of these services from particle is called ‘webhooks‘ which is an easy way of using POST, GET, and PUT requests to send or receive information using the web.
The great thing about the particle is you get the hardware WiFi board as well as the cloud services so you can get a project up and running with the minimum of fuss. The LED matrix project is just one example of what you can do with the particle platform. Over on Hackaday.io there are several particle projects including real time weather maps, electricity meters, and a toddler door monitor. These projects could all be done with any WiFi based development board and some web know-how but the particle platform takes the difficulty of these types of projects down a couple of notches. This lets you just get to work without spending all day trying to turn on an LED from your phone.
