B-L475E-IOT01A1 STM32L4 Discovery kit IoT node, low-power wireless, BLE, NFC, Sub-GHz, Wi-Fi

This board has all the bells and whistles on it.However, hobbyists should be aware that this is neither a raspberry pi nor an arduino.What it is, if I may try to explain what I as yet only partially understand, it's a platform for data collection and publishing on some cloud service like say amazon web services.The thing comes with a guide as to how to get it set up, I mean it comes with it, it refers you to videos online, which is fine, the guy presenting them sounds awesome but they're informative and plain enough to get you set up and started without too much fuss,I say without too much fuss but AWS (amazon web services) is an absolute royal pain. I've been a subscriber now for maybe 6 or 7 years and every other week they're changing stuff and sending you out cryptic emails with titles like "Elastic Beanstalk Now Extended into ES2 Route 53 conference EC2 kinesis cloudy cloud deepy deepy gateway splot splot" and that's fine, but as a hobbyist, I use maybe three or four AWS products and the rest is, frankly, gobbledygook to me. Actually most of it is gobbledygook, they seem to just make up names as they go along, I mean, I just literally don't have time to keep pace with it. I just don't have time. It's a serious case of too many technical terms.I'm thinking the best thing amazon web services could do at this point is really allow you to tick the products you want to hear about daily and only email you about those.So yeah that rant aside - luckily you're guided all the way through so assuming amazon don't change the workflow of setting up the relevant services...haha...you should be on your way.Worth mentioning that most things on AWS have free tiers for a year for new users but after that are chargeable. It's usually pennies but it depends, and the pricing schemes are a whole new topic, thankfully a bit easier to see than they used to be.I really like the board and its potential but it's a big extra step for a hobbyist who let's be honest 90%+ of the time would be better dealing with something "uncloudy" like a pi or arduino - however, that doesn't mean I'm knocking any stars off because this is what it is, and so long as that's what you want, it's a good thing.The advantage I guess is that with it being a cloud thing you don't need to run a server at home, although there's nothing stopping you doing the same thing with AWS and a pi I guess, not having looked into it. Yet.In terms of what you could use it for, hmm. Well it seems like it's for data capture and presentation online as far as I can tell, so one thing would be maybe reporting weather data to a graph, I think that would be fairly easy, I do plan to have a go at something like this when I get chance.

This is not a raspberry pi of any description. In truth, I had no idea what it was when I got it. It works with Amazon Web Service but I have absolutely no idea how people manage to use that as it is a bit of a nightmare to navigate.It has a guide for set up and it shows you YouTube videos of the same.This is aimed at someone who does this for a hobby I guess, but with all the technical terms clouding matters (see what I did there) it does feel like a chore and not fun at all. It is something I pick at occasionally but not something I would use regularly as I just don't have the need to.

STM32 by ST B-L475E-IOT01A1 STM32L4 Discovery kit IoT node, low-power wireless, BLE, NFC, Sub-GHz, Wi-Fi – Great little device, works well with the web interface programming environment. I found that my assumption that it would work like the raspberry pi, or microbit, a little wrong -- but when I moved beyond this my appreciation of the device became clearer. C++ is not a language I have used previously but I found it very like python so not too big a jump to learn. This is an IoT device, so when coupled with AWS it can do some very clever and fun things and learning the AWS environment isn't such a bad idea these days anyway! Great for learning IoT concepts, a good pathway into AWS and cloud technologies - highly recommended!

Four stars because I wasn't sure what this was - I had the impression it would be something like the Raspberry Pi, but it isn't. It is actually a Microcontroller Unit - something you might find inside an 'Internet of Things' (IoT) device e.g. an internet connected fridge. It can perform one job at a time and send data to a cloud service (AWS in the examples). The most obvious use for this board would be as some sort of weather station (it has sensors for humidity, temperature and a barometer output) sending the info. onto the internet.If you're a hobbyist into the IoT then this could be the kit for you - if you're more of a PC hobbyist then this isn't what you want.

This is a really handy piece of kit for reporting data back to cloud services. If that phrase means nothing to you, then this gadget probably isn't for you - it takes a bit of technical know-how to set it up, along with associated cloud services, and get it delivering useful data. However, that said, if you *do* know what you're doing then this is top-quality kit for it.