Azure and the Internet of Things at GXUGSA

Always fun to fly to Johannesburg and speak at GXUGSA.    I hope it was useful.

I’ve made all content available.

 

Event:  https://www.meetup.com/Gauteng-Xamarin-User-Group/events/241783761/

 

Presentation:   https://github.com/apead/XUGSA/tree/master/12092017

 

Android Things Weatherstation (Android Studio):   https://github.com/androidthings/weatherstation

 

Android Things Weatherstation (Xamarin):   https://github.com/apead/Xamarin-AndroidThings-Contrib

 

MX Chip kit Twitter Shake-Shake:  https://microsoft.github.io/azure-iot-developer-kit/docs/projects/shake-shake/

 

MX Chip orders available from DFRobot:  https://www.dfrobot.com/product-1616.html

 

This session featured

 

Azure Functions

Azure Iot Hub

Azure Stream Analytics

Azure Machine Learning

Power BI

Android Things

MX Chip Azure Iot Kit

And other Iot platforms and devices (Arduino, Netduino, Raspberry Pi, Windows 10 Iot, Xamarin Iot)

 

MXChip Iot Kit

 

IoT at GXUGSA

Happy Cross Platform IoT’ing

 

Azure Cape Town – Azure and the Internet of Things

Last night was a fun evening of Azure Iot at the Azure Cape Town user group.   Thanks to all for coming, I hope it was useful.   The turnout was awesome!

 

I’ve made all content available.

 

Presentation:   https://github.com/apead/XUGSA/tree/master/12092017

 

Android Things Weatherstation (Android Studio):   https://github.com/androidthings/weatherstation

 

Android Things Weatherstation (Xamarin):   https://github.com/apead/Xamarin-AndroidThings-Contrib

 

MX Chip kit Twitter Shake-Shake:  https://microsoft.github.io/azure-iot-developer-kit/docs/projects/shake-shake/

 

This session featured

 

Azure Functions

Azure Iot Hub

Azure Stream Analytics

Azure Machine Learning

Android Things

MX Chip Azure Iot Kit

And other Iot platforms and devices (Arduino, Netduino, Raspberry Pi, Windows 10 Iot, Xamarin Iot)

 

 

More Devices!

 

Weatherstation

 

Happy Iot’ing!

Cross Platform Iot at GXUGSA

Last night was the Cross Iot Session at GXUGSA in Johannesburg.    It’s always fun presenting all the Iot toys, but also what can actually be done with Xamarin and the rest of the Microsoft tooling.

 

It’s also not always clear that you can basically do anything you want with Xamarin, so always nice and exciting to showcase it outside the usual phone type scenarios.

 

 

Gert Talking Windows 10 Iot Core

 

 

The session featured

 

Visual Micro for Visual Studio

Visual Studio Code with Arduino Extension which is now Open Source.

Xamarin Forms and Xamarin.Android with Android Things 0.4 Preview

The new Xamarin Iot preview for Linux based devices

Windows 10 Iot Core

Azure Iot Hubs

 

Devices wise 

 

Raspberry Pi 2 + 3

Intel Edison

Raspberry Pi Zero W

Latte Panda and Arduino Leonardo

MXChip Azure Kit

Devices Devices Everywhere

The presentation can be found here:   https://github.com/apead/XUGSA/tree/master/11072017

 

Android Things Weather Station Sample with Azure Iot Hubs:    https://github.com/apead/Xamarin-AndroidThings-Contrib

Cross Platform Generic Xamarin Forms sample that ran on Phone, Android Things and Windows 10 Iot:   https://github.com/apead/XUGSABuildAutomation

 

Xamarin Android Things Nuget:  https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.Android.Things/0.4.0-devpreview

 

Xamarin Android Things Contrib Drivers:  https://www.nuget.org/packages/Xamarin.AndroidThings.Contrib.RainbowHat/0.40.0-beta

 

Getting Started with Xamarin Iot:   http://explorationspace.co.za/2017/06/21/xamarin-iot-comes-to-visual-studio-2017-on-windows/

 

MXChip Azure Kit:   https://microsoft.github.io/azure-iot-developer-kit/

 

Android Things Starter Kit with Rainbow Hat:   https://shop.pimoroni.com/products/rainbow-hat-for-android-things

 

Rainbow HAT

 

Behind the Scenes Fun 🙂

First Look at Xamarin IOT

This is a first look at the new Xamarin Iot functionality found within Visual Studio for Mac 7.1 Preview.   I will dig much further into detail in future posts, but lets have a very quick look and it.    I’m really excited about this addition to the already awesome Xamarin tooling!

 

New Iot Project Type

 

A new project type has been added for Iot.    This project type or template will create the solution and project needed to run on the Iot device.

 

Manage devices option

 

What’s immediately apparent is the new run option for the Iot project type.   There’s now a new item called “Manage Devices”

 

Iot device manager

 

The Iot Device Manager allows all the connected devices to be managed.   This setup is very similar to the Mac Agent used for iOS development with the Xamarin Visual Studio for Windows extension, however it will display all the Linux based devices running on the network.  In this case and screenshot it’s a Raspberry Pi Zero running Raspian (Jesse).   Configuring the device will allow remote deploys to the device from your Mac.    This will require a user name and password of a user on the Raspberry Pi.  This user will be used to connect to the Raspberry pi via SSH.    Also note, SSH needs to be enabled on the Raspberry Pi for this to work.

 

Executing remotely on device

 

Now you can start developing your Iot solution.   What’s really awesome is, all the things you expect to work will just work. This includes break points and a full debugging experience.     All this can happen wirelessly to a “headless” device.

 

The build and execution process is very similar to the Mac Agent when you do iOS development from Windows (Visual Studio) to a Mac.  The difference in this case, it is from a Mac (Visual Studio) to a Linux instance (Raspberry Pi).   On the very first execution, the mono run time will be copied over to the device.  This will be used to execute the built app.    The application itself and it’s “built code” is also synchronized with the Raspberry Pi.    This compiled Iot app is then in turn executed on the device remotely.

 

Lets see it in action!    Here is a simple example of the now standard Iot demo of a flashing LED, but running on a tiny Raspberry Pi Zero W.    What’s really nice about this implementation is, it runs on devices that is not supported by other Iot platforms, like Android Things and Windows 10 Iot Core.   It will run on the myriad of Linux based devices out there.

 

 

There is much more to show and tell.  So there’s much more blogs to come on this topic!   This will also include how Android Things and Xamarin Iot can work together to make cross platform Iot simpler.

 

But for now:  Happy Xamarin Iot’ing! 🙂