The Internet of Things is all about employing physical sensors on internet connected devices to gather information about the physical world, typically storing that information up into the cloud for archival or post-processing (i.e. aggregation or machine learning). Some of the more innovative projects in this space solve very interesting problems (Nest Learning Thermostat) and…
This year marked the first edition of Connect(), a live virtual event which took place in New York on November 18 – 19, 2015. The event focused on a variety of announcements surrounding the popular Visual Studio product line including Visual Studio Online and the Visual Studio IDE. The topics range from utilizing Azure alongside your…
Background: Windows 10 IoT Core was created to build powerful solutions on low-powered devices with the potential to bridge the physical world into the nearly endless power of the cloud. It offers a world of synergistic opportunity within the Microsoft ecosystem, which includes technologies such as Visual Studio, .NET, and Microsoft Azure. All of this is available…
Spark.io, creators of the most excellent Spark Core device are now known as Particle! Please keep in mind as a reader that the following information applies to the Spark Core device as well as Particle Core. In a previous post I discussed sending messages from a Spark Core Device to Azure Event Hubs by means…
Hot Tub Time Machine from The Future – Music Entertainment System The Internet of Things and Houston weather have one thing very much in common. They are sooooo hot right now! Inspired by this, I have been thinking a lot about outdoor projects that interact with the cloud, for example my recent Spark Core powered Hot Tub…
Background: Summer is here in Houston and there is no better time to get in the water to cool off or warm up. I am particularly fond of the latter, especially with a good group of friends, food, and refreshments. The problem is, it can be hard to tell when the hot tub is ready without actually getting…
In this article, I will describe how to publish data from a Spark Core to an Azure Event Hub for real-time processing using Azure Mobile Services as a message proxy. Spark OS is a distributed operating system for the Internet of Things that brings the power of the cloud to low-cost connected hardware. Spark provides…
Kinect4NES @ HackRice – First Time Player Knocks out Glass Joe In a previous post, I talked about how to create an interface to send controller commands to an NES based on interaction with the Kinect v2. The idea was successful, but I received a bit of feedback on the control being less than optimal and…
Microsoft is bringing Windows to a new class of small devices. Riding the crest of the “Internet of Things” movement, Microsoft is looking to capitalize on devices and sensor capabilities of popular development boards. Recently, members of the Windows Developer Program for IoT have been able to gain access to a build of Windows which supports…
Kinect4NES Recently, I have found myself becoming involved in the exciting world of “IoT” or internet of things. All of this started while attending a presentation on the subject that was put on by my fellow colleague Bret Stateham. If you are unfamiliar with the concept of “IoT”, I like to think of it as a programmable system…