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10 Things to Know about the IBM Internet of Things Foundation
Five plus five equals ten, and that's how many things we have bulleted for you in IBM Redbook's series as it relates to IBM Watson IoT Foundation!
5 Things to Know about the IBM Internet of Things Foundation - A forecast by Gart
5 More Things to Know about IBM Internet of Things Foundation - In the prev
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Introduction to IBM Internet of Things FoundationIBM has been delivering Internet Of Things solutions for a Smarter Planet even before the campaign launch in 2008
Check out this Introduction to the IBM IoT Foundation on Slidshare:
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Using IBM Internet of Things Foundation application on IBM BluemixIn my e However, I hadn't yet signed up for Bluemix. The sign up process was very smooth and it didn't require a credit card to get started with the 30 days trial Here are the quick steps which I performed for getting the IoTF Boilerplate added to my Bluemix app:
1.> Login to Bluemix account – click on “Create a space”
Please use a unique name for your space. If you use a name for the space which already exists, the wizard updates you about the same.
2.> Once the space was created, scrolled through to Applications – “CREATE AN APP” and chose to create a web app.
3.> There are a set of Boilerplates which help us experience the power of Bluemix with the most minimal additional work being required to be done by the end user. Please ensure that the Region is selected as US South for the IoTF Boilerplate to be available for selection. Select “Internet of Things Foundation Starter IBM” Boilerplate and use “SDK for Node.js™”
4.> Once the application is created, we would have the Routes URL for the application, clicking on the same would take us to the Node-RED for Internet of Things landing page
Node-RED provides a browser-based editor that makes it easy to wire together flows that can be deployed to the runtime in a single click. The version running here has been customized for the IBM Internet of Things Foundation. It’s strongly recommended to secure your Node-RED flow editor with a username and password, as otherwise anyone who can guess the URL of this application will be able to launch the flow editor and access your IoT device data
5.> By default, this is the information that you’d see in the Node-RED flow editor:
The flow of events is generally from left to right i.e. you’d have your input nodes on the left and output at the right side of the editor window.
6.> Double click on the “IBM IoT App in” input node. This would bring up the Edit node window. Keep all the values as default and the only input that you’d need to provide is the “Device Id”
This Device Id is the value that you can get from the top right corner of the simulated device. if you've read my earlier blog, the Device Id that had been assigned to the simulated device is “CC:BA:99:12:B7:62” and this is what you'd use as the value in the input node.
7.> Once the device id has been entered, click on the “Deploy” icon on the right corner of the Node-RED Editor. If you’ve entered the correct device id, the deployment should be successful and you’d start seeing the messages in the “debug” output pane on the right of the Node-RED editor window.
8.> You can analyse that based on the temperature of the simulated device, the output debug prints out whether the temperature is within safe limits or critical.
9.> There is a switch which is inserted which has been configured. When the temperature from the simulated device arrives, if the temperature is less than 40, it’s routed to output # 1 which has a debug/output node added to display that the temperature is within safe limits. If the temperature is greater than 40 then it goes to output # 2 which has a debug/output node added which displays that the temperature is critical. You can play around with the various options that the Node-RED Editor provides for input, output, functions etc. The standard example has the output messages sent to debug output nodes, you can replace them with any of the provided social media nodes. For example, you can send a Tweet to an authorized Twitter account if the Temperature goes beyond a certain level, so that corrective actions can be taken.
The above demo is just the tip of the iceberg. Given the immense amount of features and flexibility that IBM Bluemix and IBM IoTF provide, I would say its upto an individual’s creativity and skills on how best they would like to leverage the power of these platforms for building innovative applications quickly and efficiently! Suggested Reading:
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Hey it's much easier than you thought to get started with IBM Internet of Things Foundation (IoTF)!There is a lot of buzz going around the Internet of Things (IoT). Its being referred to as the next big thing, as a revolution which will have an impact on our day to day life! I was very excited when I read various news articles relating to IoT. The only thing that was holding me back from getting started with trying to learn about IoT was, I would need a "Thing" from the "Internet of Things" which I could connect, get data and have some analysis done with the collected data. I was also concerned that to do all those tasks, I'd need a very good command on a coding/programming language. Well, I'm not an expert on coding and my day job doesn't require me to code day in day out either. I thought I'd just have to suffice myself with reading about IoT and or watch videos around this. Recently, I had an opportunity to attend a demo on the capabilities of IBM Internet of Things Foundation (IoTF). For the first time I was able to see a real life demo of a device being connected to the IoTF and we could visualize and analyze data that was being collected from the connected device. All of this without one feeling lost. This was so cool!
*IBM IoTF: is, it’s a fully managed, cloud-hosted service that is designed to simplify and derive the value from IoT devices and it’s available through Bluemix and the IBM Marketplace. http *IBM Bluemix: IBM Bluemix is an open-standards, cloud platform for building, running, and managing applications. With Bluemix, developers can focus on building excellent user experiences with flexible compute options, choice of DevOps tooling, and a powerful set of IBM and third-party APIs and services. http
While the demo was being presented, I couldn't help but appreciate the fact that each and every step in the life cycle of connecting the device and getting data was so very straight forward and uncluttered. Armed with the information gathered from the demo, I ventured out to start exploring IoTF. I was pleasantly surprised that not only could one connect almost any of the most popular devices to IoTF, there is also an option of "Device Simulator" i.e. IBM IoTF provides a means by which even if you don't have a physical device but still want to sample the IBM Internet of Things Foundation, you can use simulated data. http The simulated device sends Temperature, Humidity & the Object Temperature at periodic intervals of time. These values can be changed manually by the user, with the help of the up/down arrows to increase or decrease the values.
Image # 1: The IBM IoTF simulated device.
Once the simulated device is connected, you just have to provide the Device ID to start visualizing the Temp
Image # 2: Visual representation of data being sent by the simulated device.
A hands on experience of IoTF certainly encouraged me to continue my journey of exploring more in the IBM Internet of Things Foundation. There is no sign up or login required for exploring the "Device Simulator" in IBM IoTF either, so you too can explore it at your convenience.
Keep watching for my next blog, in which I'll shared my experience of using the IBM
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If you already have an IBM ID, you can use the same for signing up with Bluemix. 
