Azure IoT Hub & IoT Certified Device

Azure IoT hub has been released on Azure conference 2015 (End of September) to public and it has its own advantage compare to earlier azure IoT services such as Eventhub and service bus. It is capable of receiving Device to Cloud messages (Telemetry message, feedback) as well as sending Cloud to device messages (Sending commands to the devices). It allows us to manage, control and connect huge number of devices based on the pricing tier and supports HTTP, AMQP and MQTT (through protocol gateway) protocols to access from devices. SDKs are available for multiple platform such as windows, Linux and some RTOS and also supports multiple languages such as C,.Net, Java and Node.js.
Please see the below link to know more ...
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=1615

Windows 10 IoT Core – A good choice for building IoT Gateway Device

Recently Insider preview for Windows 10 IoT Core is released, which shows that Microsoft Windows 10 IoT Core team is continuously working to bring a new OS for a specific purpose and providing a series of releases with useful updates. This version of Windows 10 supports x86/x64 and ARM based SOCs thereby providing low cost and small foot print IoT devices. As an Embedded/IoT enthusiastic/ professional, I was curious to know the special features of this version of Windows claimed with a suffix “IoT”. Interestingly I went through an Intel Gateway fact sheet where Windows 10 IoT Core is mentioned as an OS for their gateways.  So I thought to evaluate the OS from this aspect. I share my findings here.

A basic functionality of the IoT Gateway includes devices/sensors connectivity, device management, cloud connectivity, Edge or local computing and data security in various levels. 

IoT With Azure - Enterprise Cloud Road Show 2015

I got an opportunity to present a session on Internet of Things (IoT) with Azure in the Enterprise Cloud Road Show 2015 event conducted by Microsoft. All the sessions taken by MVPs. Thanks Biplab Paul - Community Manager and Gandhrav Rawat for this opportunity. I have shared a snapshot of this Event.

IoT with Azure on Enterprise Cloud Road Show 2015

I have shown a demo on  pushing data to Azure Event hubs from Windows 10 IoT Core running on Raspberry Pi 2. you can refer the following blog post for source code.
Windows 10 IoT Core on Raspberry Pi 2 – Adafruit Sensor data to Event Hubs

Windows 10 IoT Core RP-2 Demo Setup

See the below link for presentation slides.
http://www.slideshare.net/VinothRajagopalan/io-t-with-azure

Windows 10 IoT Core on Raspberry Pi 2 – Adafruit Sensor data to Event Hubs

I have moved this article to hackster.io for easy access and also the prompt site for this kind of article. Here is the link, Please go ahead...

Global Azure Bootcamp 2015 - Microsoft IoT Solutions with Azure

Global Azure Bootcamp is a one day world-wide event on 25^th April, driven by Microsoft Azure experts and community enthusiasts, to help thousands of people get up to speed on developing Cloud Computing Applications for Azure. This event is organised by Karthikeyan Anbarasan (MVP) through Chennai Microsoft User Group (CMUG). I got an opportunity to take a session on “Microsoft IoT Solutions with Azure” with a live demo on accessing Azure Event hubs and Stream Analytics using Intel Galileo with sensors – Windows IoT. 

You can refer the previous blog  Windows IoT on Galileo – Using Event Hubs and Stream Analytics for source code.

Presentation Slides: http://www.slideshare.net/VinothRajagopalan/global-azure-boot-camp-2015-microsoft-iot-solutions-with-azure

Thanks CMUG!!!

Windows IoT on Galileo – Using Event Hubs and Stream Analytics

This blogs explains you on how to access Azure Event hubs from Galileo integrated with Adafruit 10-DOF IMU sensor board and using Azure stream Analytics to pipeline the sensor data stream to Azure storage services. 

Prerequisites

• Supported for both Intel Galileo Gen1 and Gen2.
• Latest OS update released (A common .wim for Gen1 and Gen2) for lightning (improved performance on I2C, SPI, and UART etc..)
• Visual studio 2013 with Windows IoT SDK (Visit: windowsondevices.com for more details) and Microsoft IoT C++ SDK and its dependent NuGet Package is required.
• As explained in Windows IoT on Galileo – Using Event Hubs (Connectthedot.io) , Download the sample Event hub source code given for Galileo from github.

Windows IoT on Galileo – Using Event Hubs (Connectthedot.io)

An interesting open source project going on Microsoft Open technologies named connectthedot.io.  

Fig) Connectthedot.io

This is intended to help developers to connect small devices to Microsoft Azure and implementing data analytics with Azure services such as Event hubs, Stream Analytics and Machine Learning.

One interesting thing I found from the project is, we can access Azure Event hubs from Galileo Windows IoT using simple C++. Here is the link for the sample application created using “Galileo Wiring App”.

https://github.com/MSOpenTech/connectthedots/tree/master/Devices/DirectlyConnectedDevices/IntelGalileo

This application get the data from sensors and push it as events to Azure Event hub. This application creates JSON packets and send it through AMQP protocol to Azure Event hub. Challenging part (sending data from Galileo) is released by Microsoft Open Technologies. Receiving part should be a cake walk. Sample for receiving data from Windows 8.1 PC or WP8.1 is already given in MSDN using Azure .Net SDK. 

I used azurestorage services for earlier demo/blogs with Galileo. Now I am going to try this application with my sensor module connected with Galileo. Hope you can also enjoy this.

Windows IoT on Galileo – Sensors to Server Part-2

As a final touch and the continuation of earlier Windows IoT for Galileo – Sensors to Server, This blog explain you on how to retrieve sensor data from Azure storage table services that already have sensor data pushed from Galileo Windows IoT.

      Prerequisites

• Visual studio 2013 with Windows phone 8.1 SDK.
•  NuGet package for Windows Azure Storage services version 4.3.0 and its dependencies.

Windows IoT on Galileo – Sensors to Server

This blog explain you on how to push data to Azure storage table services from Adafruit 10-DOF IMU sensor module connected to Galileo Gen1 or Gen2.  

Prerequisites

• Supported for both Intel Galileo Gen1 and Gen2.
•  Latest OS update released on 21-Nov-2014 (common .wim for Gen1 and Gen2) for lightning (improved performance on I2C, SPI, and UART etc..)
• Visual studio 2013 with Windows IoT SDK (Visit: windowsondevices.com for more details) and Microsoft IoT C++ SDK and its dependent NuGet Package is required.
• NuGet package for C++ REST SDK (Casablanca) Version ≥ 2.0.1 (tested with version 2.0.1 and 2.2.0)
• Source code for C++ REST SDK. Go through the instructions given in the below link.
• http://ms-iot.github.io/content/Casablanca.htm
• NuGet package for Microsoft Azure Storage Client Library for C++ 0.3.0-preview
• Source code for Azure Storage Client Library for C++ 0.3.0-preview from Github.
• Sample source code to access the Azure storage client library. I used the source code for accessing table for this example but it should work for all storage services.

Windows IoT on Galileo – Accessing Azure storage services

Now Galileo is capable of accessing azure storage services after several tries and tweaks. As you know Windows developer Program for IoT released the Casablanca C++ REST SDK for accessing cloud services from Galileo but this is not sufficient to access azure services and we need to port or develop another layer on top of it to access specific Azure services. I searched and fortunately found a C++ library that can specifically made to access Azure storage services and again that is using the Casablanca C++ REST SDK. Wow!!!. But this happiness was not withstood for long time after building it and running it simply on Galileo. Let’s get hands dirty!!!

Prerequisites

• Supported for both Intel Galileo Gen1 and Gen2.
• Latest OS update released on 21-Nov-2014 (common .wim for Gen1 and Gen2) for    lightning (improved performance on I2C, SPI, and UART etc..) 
• Visual studio 2013 with Windows IoT SDK (Visit: windowsondevices.com for more details) and Microsoft IoT C++ SDK and its dependent NuGet Package is required.
• NuGet package for C++ REST SDK (Casablanca) Version ≥ 2.0.1 (tested with version    2.0.1 and 2.2.0)
• Source code for C++ REST SDK. Go through the instructions given in the below link.
• http://ms-iot.github.io/content/Casablanca.htm

• NuGet package for Microsoft Azure Storage Client Library for C++ 0.3.0-preview
• Source code for Azure Storage Client Library for C++ 0.3.0-preview from Github.
• Sample source code to access the Azure storage client library. I used the source code for accessing table for this example but it should work for all storage services.

Windows Embedded Compact – Accessing Microsoft Azure Storage services

Microsoft Azure storage services contains queues, tables and blob storage. This table is a non SQL tables which store data in a simple manner and it has its unique advantage than the Azure SQL Database in cost aspect.
There is no standard library so far to access Azure storage services in Windows Embedded compact. Accessing storage services requires HTTP REST API implementation, e-con systems has developed a .Net CF based framework to access Azure storage services from Windows Embedded Compact.
Please see the below link to proceed further.
http://www.e-consystems.com/blog/windowsce/?p=1202

Sensor to Cloud: Connecting Cloud (Azure) from Windows Embedded Compact 2013 Demostration

e-con systems demonstrate a cloud (Azure) connected security access control system based on Windows Embedded compact 2013 running on Almach Rapid development kit. This is an typical example to showcase the Internet of Things capabilities on compact 2013 devices.  This application utilized Azure web services, SQL data base services and Storage blob services.

Sensors to Cloud on MVP cloud OS Road show - Chennai

I got an opportunity to present a session regarding Connecting Azure from Windows Embedded Compact 2013 with a live demonstration on Microsoft MVP Cloud OS Road show - Chennai on 15th Feb 2014. I used Almach kit to perform the demonstration. Soon i will upload a video on connecting cloud from WEC2013.

Thanks to Biplab paul - MVP community program manager India in order to give me an opportunity to present a session