ThingSpeak is an open data platform for the Internet of Things. Your device or application can communicate with ThingSpeak using a RESTful API, and you can either keep your data private, or make it public. In addition, use ThingSpeak to analyze and act on your data. ThingSpeak provides an online text editor to perform data analysis and visualization using MATLAB^®. You can also perform actions such as running regularly scheduled MATLAB code or sending a tweet when your data passes a defined threshold. ThingSpeak is used for diverse applications ranging from weather data collection and analysis, to synchronizing the color of lights across the world.

At the heart of ThingSpeak is a time-series database. ThingSpeak provides users with free time-series data storage in channels. Each channel can include up to eight data fields. This tutorial provides an introduction to some of the applications of ThingSpeak, a conceptual overview of how ThingSpeak stores time-series data, and how MATLAB analysis is incorporated in ThingSpeak.