Azure Sphere – Initial Setup, Configuration and First Impressions

29th of September, 2018 / / No Comments

In April this year, Microsoft announced Azure Sphere. This was the same week as I’d be preparing for a presentation I was giving on Azure IoT at the Sydney location for the Global Azure Bootcamp. When pre-orders became available from Seeed Studio I naturally signed up as I’ve previously bought many IoT related pieces of hardware from Seeed Studio.

Fast forward to this week and the Azure Sphere MT3620 device shipped. It’s a long weekend here in Sydney Australia and delivery wasn’t due until after the long weekend, but by some miracle the packaged was delivered on the Friday by DHL after only leaving China 3-4 days earlier.… [Keep reading] “Azure Sphere – Initial Setup, Configuration and First Impressions”

A Voice Assistant for Microsoft Identity Manager

2nd of August, 2018 / / No Comments

This is the third and final post in my series around using your voice to query/search Microsoft Identity Manager or as I’m now calling it, the Voice Assistant for Microsoft Identity Manager.
The two previous posts in this series detail some of my steps and processes in developing and fleshing out this concept. The first post detailed the majority of the base functionality whilst the second post detailed the auditing and reporting aspects into Table Storage and Power BI.… [Keep reading] “A Voice Assistant for Microsoft Identity Manager”

Using your Voice to Search Microsoft Identity Manager – Part 2

5th of July, 2018 / / No Comments

Introduction

Last month I wrote this post that detailed using your voice to search/query Microsoft Identity Manager. That post demonstrated a working solution (GitHub repository coming next month) but was still incomplete if it was to be used in production within an Enterprise. I hinted then that there were additional enhancements I was looking to make. One is an Auditing/Reporting aspect and that is what I cover in this post.

Overview

The one element of the solution that has visibility of each search scenario is the IoT Device.… [Keep reading] “Using your Voice to Search Microsoft Identity Manager – Part 2”

Using your Voice to Search Microsoft Identity Manager – Part 1

25th of June, 2018 / / No Comments

Introduction

Yes, you’ve read the title correctly. Speaking to Microsoft Identity Manager. The concept behind this was born off the back of some other work I was doing with Microsoft Cognitive Services. I figured it shouldn’t be that difficult if I just break down the concept into individual elements of functionality and put together a proof of concept to validate the idea. That’s what I did and this is the first post of the solution as an overview.… [Keep reading] “Using your Voice to Search Microsoft Identity Manager – Part 1”

Exporting IoT Device Information from Azure IoT Hub(s) using PowerShell

22nd of May, 2018 / / No Comments

Introduction

I have a number of Azure IoT Hubs each with a number of devices configured on them. I wanted to export the details for each IoT Device. This can’t be done via the Azure Portal (May 2018) so I looked to leverage the Azure.IoTHub New-AzureRmIotHubExportDevices cmdlet.
Now the documentation for New-AzureRmIotHubExportDevices is a little light on. When I was running the New-AzureRmIotHubExportDevices I kept getting the error ‘Operation returned an invalid status code ‘InternalServerError’.… [Keep reading] “Exporting IoT Device Information from Azure IoT Hub(s) using PowerShell”

Adding a Display to the Teenager Notification Service Azure IoT Device

10th of April, 2018 / / No Comments

Overview

A couple of weeks back I wrote this post that detailed Building a Teenager Notification Service using Azure IoT an Azure Function, Microsoft Flow, Mongoose OS and a Micro Controller. 
Over the Easter break I enhanced it with the inclusion of a display. I was rummaging around in a box of parts when I found a few LCD displays I’d purchased on speculation some time ago. They are SSD1306 LCD driven units that can be found on Amazon here.… [Keep reading] “Adding a Display to the Teenager Notification Service Azure IoT Device”

Evaluating the migration of Azure Functions to Microsoft Flow – Twitter IoT Integration

5th of April, 2018 / / No Comments

Introduction

Almost 18 months ago I wrote this post on integrating Twitter with Azure Functions to Tweet IoT data. A derivative of that solution has been successfully running for about the same period. Azure Functions have been bullet proof for me.
After recently implementing Microsoft Flow as detailed in my Teenager Notification Device post here I started looking at a number of the Azure Functions I have running and looked at what would be better suited to being implemented with Flow.… [Keep reading] “Evaluating the migration of Azure Functions to Microsoft Flow – Twitter IoT Integration”

Building a Teenager Notification Service using Azure IoT an Azure Function, Microsoft Flow, Mongoose OS and a Micro Controller

28th of March, 2018 / / No Comments

Introduction

This is the third and final post on my recent experiments integrating small micro controllers (ESP8266) running Mongoose OS integrated with Azure IoT Services.
In the first post in this series I detailed creating the Azure IoT Hub and registering a NodeMCU (ESP8266 based) micro controller with it. The post detailing that can be found here. Automating the creation of Azure IoT Hubs and the registration of IoT Devices with PowerShell and VS Code
In the second post I detailed communicating with the micro controller (IoT device) using MQTT and PowerShell.… [Keep reading] “Building a Teenager Notification Service using Azure IoT an Azure Function, Microsoft Flow, Mongoose OS and a Micro Controller”

Integrating Azure IoT Devices with MongooseOS MQTT and PowerShell

21st of March, 2018 / / No Comments

Introduction and Recap

In my last post here on IoT I detailed getting started with Azure IoT Hubs and registering an IoT device and sending telemetry from the IoT Device to the Azure IoT Hub. And doing all that using PowerShell.
If you haven’t read that post or worked through those steps, stop here, work through that and then come back. This post details configuring MongooseOS to receive MQTT messages from Azure IoT which is the last mile to making the IoT Device flexible for integration with anything you can think of.… [Keep reading] “Integrating Azure IoT Devices with MongooseOS MQTT and PowerShell”

Commanding your Philips Hue lights with PowerShell

19th of March, 2018 / / 8 Comments

A couple of years ago I bought a number of Philips Hue bulbs and put them in the living areas of my house. Typically we control them via the Hue App on our phones, or via the Google Assistant. This all works very well, but of course I’m a techie and have a bunch of other Internet of Things devices and it would be great to integrate the Hue lights with those.
This post is the first in doing that integration.… [Keep reading] “Commanding your Philips Hue lights with PowerShell”