MKR1000 and HTTPS

As you noticed in the section about HTTP communication, communicating with a Particle Photon over HTTP without encryption was very easy and reliable. HTTPS was another matter though. With the Particle ecosystem, the recommended approach is to use Particle.publish() in combination with a WebHook configured in the Particle Cloud.

Other devices, like the MKR1000 with its WINC1500 low power Wi-Fi chip that includes a cryptochip for secure communication, make it easier to reliably use encryption because the standard libraries support it out of the box. The WINC1500 chip also allows you to upload certificates to the firmware.

Of course, because the MKR1000 uses Arduino, we have to switch to another toolchain to develop our firmware. In the next section, we will discuss some of the requirements. After that, we will create a simple sketch that communicates securely with the Azure Function that was used in the HTTP section.