This Hands on Lab (HOL) demonstrates connecting a Raspberry Pi running Raspian to [Azure IoT Hub] (https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/iot-hub/) and sending telemetry to Azure IoT Hub from either:
- a physical Sense HAT connected to the Raspberry Pi; or
- a Sense HAT Emulator installed on the Raspberry Pi.
Completing this HOL will provide you with the basic skills needed to connect and securely send telemetry from a physical device (e.g. a field device or field gateway) to the Azure IoT Hub. This HOL does not demonstrate what can be done with the data after it arrives at the Azure IoT Hub. Having said that, you can do almost anything including complex event processing, stream processing, saving telemetry to blob storage or databases, analytics, training of Machine Learning models etc.
We didn't want you to mess around with breadboards, jumper cables, resistors etc. This just wastes time and adds nothing to the goal of connecting a sensor to Azure IoT Hub. The Sense HAT has all the necessary components installed on the circuit board, including a ready to use library, and a series of sensors to play with.
For simplicity and to avoid downloading/compiling SDKs during the HOL, we chose to send the Sense Hat telemetry to Azure IoT Hub using the IoT Hub REST API over HTTPS. Of course, you can use one of the many device SDKs available, which support sending messages over AMQP and MQTT. If you want to use the device SDKs, refer to the Using the .NET Device SDK section below.
It is expected that you will have a base understanding of the following:
- Microsoft Azure (we will discuss the IoT specific aspects of Azure so are expecting attendees to understand Azure and the capabilities in a broader sense).
- Basic system administration skills (eg. SSH, SCP, copying file, etc.)
- Some development experience is beneficial but not required.
You can order your hardware from a variety of online sites such as adafruit.com, amazon.com etc. Please order yours 3-4 weeks in advance of the HOL so it will arrive in time.
- Raspberry Pi 3 Model B or Raspberry Pi Zero W with latest version of Raspian installed on the micro SD card. Using NOOBS works fine. Note: if you are using the Raspberry Pi Zero W, make sure you bring the mini-HDMI to HMDI adapter for connectivity to a monitor as well as a USB hub so that you can connect a keyboard and mouse to the Pi. (if you already have a Pi 2 Model B with USB Wi-Fi dongle, that will probably work as well)
- OPTIONAL (for those who want to play with real hardware): Sense HAT If you don't want to use the physical Sense HAT, you can also use the Sense HAT Emulator which comes with the Raspian O/S. You will use the sensors build into the Sense HAT to generate telemetry data as well as use the RGB LED matrix to display messages sent from your IoT solution.
- Laptop (running whatever operating system you desire) but IDEALLY running Windows so you can install/run Device Explorer. If you are running a non-Windows OS, then you will use the CLI tool iothub-explorer
- [PuTTY] (http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html) or another SSH client. You will use PuTTY to SSH into your Raspberry Pi
- If you are using the Sense HAT Emulator (vs the physical device), you'll need to install VNC viewer on your laptop so that you can remotely view your Raspbian desktop. Download and install RealVNC from (https://www.realvnc.com/download/viewer/)
- Install Device Explorer. If you are running a non-Windows OS, then you will use the CLI tool iothub-explorer
- A corporate Azure subscription. You can use a corporate MSDN Azure subscription or a subscription from your company.
- A PowerBI account (same account as the corporate Azure account).
- A basic understanding of Python and Linux.
Follow the instructions here before you arrive on-site for the hands-on-lab workshop.
The following subsections of the Hands on Labs are as follows: