Getting Started with Internet of Things (IoT)

I have many people asking me how do I do Internet of Things (IoT) projects. The kind of people which ask me are from various different backgrounds like e.g. College grads, Mechanical engineers, Creative Tech designers, Computer Engineers and even Solutions Architects who have different domain knowledge. Personally, I think everyone is curious about the buzzword and since the market is flooded with devices like Alexa, Google Home and smartphones, people are keen to automate things or derive insights.

In this series, I wish to share with everyone some things for those who are curious to start or do something with IoT in the cheapest and most affordable way. All the articles would be targeted to tech enthusiasts who are passionate to try out stuff and I would be happy to answer questions if someone has any difficulty in following the content. Going through the concepts and terminologies is out of the scope of the articles. The articles would be focused on the practical aspects.

So, lets begin…!

Setting up your first IoT Device ….!

In this tutorial, we would see how we could setup our first IoT device which would be a basis for all our future series of tutorials. We would setup a Linux based IoT device which could access the internet. You could say a mini Linux computer

We would setup a Raspberry Pi which would run Ubuntu Linux operating system with our configurations and various packages by which we would be able to make our IoT application in the upcoming tutorials.

One would need to source the below items before we proceed further.

• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B
• 16 GB or larger microSD card. The speed class of the card also matters-class 10 card or above is the way to go.
• 5V/2.5 A micro USB power adapter
• HDMI cable, Monitor, USB keyboard and mouse.
• PC or Mac with SD card reader.

Download the image of the operating system from the link. Then, you need to decompress the file using the tools on your computer. On Windows, one could use 7-Zip or on Mac, you could use Keka. After decompressing, there will be an image file which you need to burn to the micro SD card. Use Etcher application to accomplish this task. It’s very handy…!