Possible to use Qwiic Like a Generic Message Bus?

Qwiic System
1

I am in the planning phase of an electric furnace project for metal casting. I haven’t purchased any components yet, but I’m probably going to use bits and pieces from the Qwiic ecosystem. Specifically the 4x relay board and the K-Type thermocouple breakout board.

My thinking is that I’ll use a RedBoard as the “brains” to monitor and control the temperature of the furnace via the Qwiic components. Then I’d like to integrate a Raspberry Pi to host a website that can be used to send commands to the RedBoard. Commands might include turning the furnace on and off, setting the temperature setpoint, or setting the temperature curve. I will probably also want the Raspberry Pi to receive and log real-time data from the RedBoard like the current temperature.

It is my understanding that I could use something like an Arduino Ethernet Shield plus MQTT to implement communication between the RedBoard and the Raspberry Pi. However, I’m wondering if there is something native to the Qwiic ecosystem that would allow this type of communication. I’d like to reduce my dependency on a full networking stack on the RedBoard to reduce points of failure. Ideally, the Raspberry Pi is the only network connected device.

2

The only issue I see with the plan is that adding a shield is also introducing a point of failure; I’d recommend something like https://www.sparkfun.com/products/19177 that has both wi-fi and BT so you can still only have 1 device on the network if you’d like

Just be sure to run through the hookup guide from the product page(s) for each to learn how to get them going