DEV Community: Princesse Lawrie

Stream Data using an Azure IoT Hub

Princesse Lawrie — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 16:59:44 +0000

Suppose you just bought a new car for your Uber business and will like to pick up signals from your new Uber car around the city to ensure it is not driven outside a predetermined zone, Azure IoT hub will be a great tool to this for you.

But first, what is an Azure IoT hub?

An IoT (Internet Of Things) is a network of physical devices that connect to and exchange data with other devices and services over the Internet or other network. Azure IoT Hub is a managed service hosted in the cloud that acts as a central message hub for communication between an IoT application and its attached devices. You can connect millions of devices and their backend solutions reliably and securely. Just to note here too that almost any device can be connected to an IoT hub.

In today's exercise we will be configuring an Azure IoT hub to authenticate a connection to an IoT device using Raspberry Pi simulator found online.

Step 1: Create an IoT Hub

Next click on Create

Create a name for resource group and IoT hub name which should be globally unique, also for the rest of the instance details do not change the default settings.

Once done, click on Review + create. Then click Create.

Azure IoT Hub has been deployed successfully!

Step 2: Adding IoT device

Once the deployment is complete, click Go to resource. Then click Devices to enable us add an IoT device.

Next click on Add Device, add the name of the device in the Device ID - let's call it lawrieiot, any name works provided it is globally unique

Once that is filled click Save

Great! the IoT device is set up successfully

Step 3:Testing the device using a Raspberry Pi Simulator

Next we will click on the new device lawrieiot, locate the primary connection string and copy all the code or just click the copy to clipboard icon circled below

Open a new tab in your web browser and paste this link https://aka.ms/RaspPi. Next locate the placeholder in line 15 and replace it with the primary connection string copied earlier.

Select Run in the integrated console window to run the application.

You should see the following outcome that shows the sensor data and messages are sent to your IoT hub

The diode will be blinking and messages sent to the IoT hub

To access the messages, go back to IoT Hub Overview page, scroll down to Show data for last: and switch to 1 Hour. Refresh from time to time to have the most recent number of messages received

Good news! We just set up an Azure IoT Hub to collect sensor data from an IoT device.

NB: Ensure to remove the resource group to avoid additional costs.

Thanks for reading!!!

Create a Windows Virtual Machine via Azure Portal

Princesse Lawrie — Wed, 03 Jan 2024 08:12:33 +0000

Hello Cloud Enthusiast, have you tried creating a virtual machine yet using the famous Azure portal?

To begin with, what is a virtual machine? A virtual machine is the virtualization or emulation of a computer system. Being an emulation, a virtual machine can perform almost all of the same functions as a computer, including running applications and operating systems. It can run on a physical machine and access computing resources.

Follow me as I show you the basic steps to create a virtual machine.

Step 1:

Go to https://azure.microsoft.com/, click on the "Start free" button and follow the prompts to create an account.

Step 2:

Once you have an Azure account, sign in to the Azure portal via https://portal.azure.com in your browser. When you are logged in successfully, it should look like this;

Step 3:

Click on virtual machine on the home page and click the down arrow beside create and select create a virtual machine hosted by Azure

Step 4:

Let's begin with creating a resource group by clicking on Create New

I called the resource group Decemberworkload and my virtual machine lawrievm, any name works too!
On the next few screenshots you will see the options I selected based on my subscription.

Step 5:

Now let's create a username and password for our virtual machine, take note of the password because we will need it to have access to the virtual machine created.

Step 6:

Click on Review + create tab next to verify validation, a green check mark will appear on the top left hand screen of the review page followed by a breakdown list of options selected for the disks sizes, networking, management etc - usually they are preset already

Step 7:

Now click the Create tab and wait for the deployment to run through

Deployment is complete...Yes! Let us now access the vm created by clicking on Go to resource tab

Step 8:

The status shows the vm is now running. Click Connect

Step 9

Next click Download RDP file since we are running a Windows vm

Step 10:

Once the download is complete, open the file and click Connect

Now enter your password to access the vm

Your virtual machine has come to live and is ready for use!!! Yippee!!!

NB: Ensure to delete any resources created on Azure to save cost, remember we are working with the free subscription.

Until then, Happy New Year 2024 and see you on my next post.
Ciao!😊

Merry Christmas! #holidays #vacation #endoftheyear

Princesse Lawrie — Mon, 25 Dec 2023 15:33:47 +0000