Automating the creation of Azure IoT Hubs and the registration of IoT Devices with PowerShell and VS Code

5th of February, 2018 / / No Comments

The creation of an Azure IoT Hub is quick and simple, either through the Azure Portal or using PowerShell. But what can get more time-consuming is the registration of IoT Devices with the IoT Hub and generation of SAS Tokens for them for authentication.
In my experiments with micro-controllers and their integration with Azure IoT Services I often find I keep having to manually do tasks that should have just been automated. So I did. In this post I’ll cover using PowerShell to;

  • create an Azure IoT Hub
  • register an Azure IoT Device
  • generate a SAS Token for the IoT Device to use for authentication to an Azure IoT Hub from a Mongoose OS enabled ESP8266 micro controller

IoT Integration

Prerequisites

In order to fully test this, ideally you will have a micro-controller.… [Keep reading] “Automating the creation of Azure IoT Hubs and the registration of IoT Devices with PowerShell and VS Code”

Getting started developing Custom Actions for the Google Assistant (Home)

22nd of September, 2017 / / No Comments

 

Introduction

Whilst I was in the USA recently I bought myself a Google Home. My home already had Hue Lights, Chromecast on a couple of TV’s and I’m a big user of Spotify (Premium). It was very quick to get it up and running and doing simple tasks, but I started thinking about what custom things I could get it to do. Could I get it to call custom/private API to get some information and let me know the result?… [Keep reading] “Getting started developing Custom Actions for the Google Assistant (Home)”

Command and control with Arduino, Windows Phone and Azure Mobile Services

24th of January, 2015 / / 1 Comment

In most of our posts on the topic of IoT to date we’ve focussed on how to send data emitted from sensors and devices to centralised platforms where we can further process and analyse this data. In this post we’re going to have a look at how we can reverse this model and control our ‘things’ remotely by utilising cloud services. I’m going to demonstrate how to remotely control a light emitting diode (LED) strip with a Windows Phone using Microsoft Azure Mobile Services.… [Keep reading] “Command and control with Arduino, Windows Phone and Azure Mobile Services”

IoT – Solar & Azure

18th of November, 2014 / / 6 Comments

Ever since we got our solar system installed about two years ago, I’ve been keeping track of the total power generated by the system. Every month I would write down the totals and add it to my Excel spreadsheet. Although it’s not much work, it’s still manual work… yes all 2 minutes every month.

So when the whole “Internet of Things” discussion started at our office (see Matt’s blog “Azure Mobile Services and the Internet of Things“) I thought it would be a good opportunity to look at doing this using Azure – even if it was only to prove the IoT concept.… [Keep reading] “IoT – Solar & Azure”

Azure Mobile Services and the Internet of Things

30th of July, 2014 / / 11 Comments

The IT industry is full of buzzwords and “The Internet of Things” (IoT) is one that’s getting thrown about a lot lately. The IoT promises to connect billions of devices and sensors to the internet. How this data is stored, sorted, analysed and surfaced will determine the amount of value it is to your business. With this in mind I thought it’s time to start playing around with some bits and pieces to see if I could create my very own IoT connected array of sensors.… [Keep reading] “Azure Mobile Services and the Internet of Things”