Have you ever considered connecting your IoT device to the cloud? Or did you want to build a small IoT solution with your devices and sensors? Now Azure IoT provides you a series of scenario-based tutorials that can help jump start your IoT journey with Azure and Azure IoT Hub.

As a Program Manager from Microsoft Developer Division, I am working with my team to lower the barrier for those who wants to learn the basic of IoT device and application development. With Azure cloud services and Azure IoT Hub, now IoT developers can simply follow the below three steps to build their IoT solution.

Step 1 – Prepare your first IoT hub

Azure IoT Hub is a fully managed service that enable reliable and secure bi-directional communications between millions of devices and a solution back end. With an IoT hub, you can have secure bidirectional communications between your devices and the cloud. You can see the step-by-step guide here.

Step 2 – Setup your device and deploy the sample application

With open-sourced sample codes, developers can learn how to use Azure IoT Device SDK to establish the connection between devices and the IoT hub. Before you jump to the coding part, you should firstly choose your device/platform and the programming language. The table below shows the device-language combination. You can use this table to help you quickly locate your interested tech stack:

In the tutorial, you might need to connect LEDs and temperature sensor. No need to worry if you don’t have those stuffs, you can try use simulated data in sample codes.

Step 3 – build-up your small IoT solution with selected Azure services

After connected your device to Azure with provided sample application, next step is trying to explore how to build up your IoT scenarios with other Azure services and tools.

Manage cloud device messaging with iothub-explorer

You learn how to use iothub-explorer to monitor device-to-cloud messages and to send cloud-to-device messages. Device-to-cloud messages could be sensor data that your device collects and then sends to your IoT hub. Cloud-to-device messages could be commands that your IoT hub sends to your device to blink an LED that is connected to your device.

Save IoT Hub messages to Azure data storage

Sometimes you need to store your sensor data from your IoT device to some cloud storage and make it persistent. You learn how to create an Azure storage account and an Azure Function App to store IoT Hub messages in Azure table storage.

Data Visualization in Power BI

You learn how to visualize real-time sensor data that your Azure IoT hub receives by Power BI. Power BI provides interactive visualizations with self-service business intelligence capabilities, where end users can create reports and dashboards by themselves.

Data Visualization with Web Apps

You learn how to visualize real-time sensor data that your Azure IoT hub receives by running a web application that is hosted on an Azure web app.

Weather forecast using Azure Machine Learning

You learn how to use Azure Machine Learning to do weather forecast (chance of rain) using the temperature and humidity data from your Azure IoT hub. The chance of rain is the output of a prepared weather prediction model. Azure Machine Learning is a cloud predictive analytics service that makes it possible to quickly create and deploy predictive models as analytics solutions.

Device management with iothub-explorer

You learn using iothub-explorer with various management options. Azure IoT provides various device-to-cloud and cloud-to-device communication options. By using tools to do device-to-cloud and cloud-to-device communication, you can learn how to manage your devices.

Remote monitoring and notifications with Logic Apps

You learn how to create an Azure logic app that connects your IoT hub and your mailbox for temperature monitoring and notifications. This tutorial is like a remote monitoring project, which is a typical IoT scenario.

More scenario-based tutorials are coming, just stay tuned. And please give us your feedback or suggestions: contact us by clicking the “Contact” on the right panel.