IoTFuse - Workshops 2018

LEARNING OBJECTIVE
We’ll begin with a quick demo of the Mozilla Things Gateway, running on a Raspberry Pi 3. Then we’ll get hands-on with the Microchip SAM W25 Xplained Pro. You will load an example from PlatformIO onto the board, to enable it to be discovered and controlled via the Things Gateway. The example will let you control the state of the SAM W25 onboard LED.

HOW THIS FITS INTO IOT
Today’s IoT products are often built and deployed as vertically integrated or “end-to-end solutions”. The main problem with this approach is that each product vendor is burdened with the maintenance of the entire vertical stack (plus custom smartphone apps) to support their product. For smart home devices, this OEM development overhead and ongoing cloud services maintenance translates into “smart home products”, such as light bulbs and power plugs, that cost considerably more than their unconnected counterparts (more than 10x the cost!). Mozilla has built an open source IoT software framework that matches the company’s proposal to the W3C Web of Things Interest Group. Attendees will take advantage of the Mozilla Project Things framework when building a “web thing” out of the Microchip developer board.

WHAT ATTENDEES DO
Participants will explore the Mozilla Things Gateway and then program a Microchip SAM W25 Xplained Pro so that it can connect to the Gateway, and have its onboard LED controlled via the gateway UI. If attendees finish early they can extend the example to develop a more advanced web thing.

WHAT ATTENDEES BRING
Laptop with PlatformIO installed (we recommend using the extension to VS Code, but other PlatformIO-ready IDEs are fine too)

KNOWLEDGE REQUIRED
Knowledge of C/C++ and/or Wiring/Arduino framework programming helpful, but not required. You will be flashing and optionally modifying Wiring/Arduino framework example code.

PRE-CLASS SETUP
Install PlatformIO on your laptop.
Optionally, sign up for a 30-day free PlatformIO Plus account.
Optionally, install the Mozilla Things Gateway software on your own Raspberry Pi and bring it along.

WHAT ATTENDEES RECEIVE
Loaner board: Microchip SAM W25 Xplained Pro

LINKS & READING MATERIAL
‣Mozilla Project Things
‣PlatformIO Development Environment
‣Microchip SAM W25 Xplained Pro Development Board
‣Lars Lohn Blog (IoT Series 1 - see all 7 parts -- and Series 2)