FROM SENSORS TO CLOUD USING NODE JS

IoT Workshop at The Multimedia University of Kenya.

Published in

IoT/5G Extreme Ideas Lab

5 min readDec 29, 2016

During this event, I took the attendees through creating a ThingSpeak Client with Node Js. I showed them how an Angular Js client can be used for updating and reading channels and fields on ThingSpeak. The Intel Edison board acted as a server hosting a webpage which was used to store and retrieve data from thingSpeak using HTTP over the Internet or via a Local Area Network.

Intel provides a library for its IoT dev boards called MRAA, which is a “Low Level Skeleton

Library for IO Communication on GNU/Linux platforms”. I showed them how to use

Express/Socket.IO for Websockets communication. With the setup, it was possible to send data to the Intel Edison via Websockets. The Socket.IO library allows bi-directional communication, where we could relay sensor data from the I/O pins back to the client in real-time as well.

I also created a create a remote node js server on the Edison board and hosted a simple client website where we controlled an LED with a web interface via Web sockets.

The attendees were then divided into different groups where they were to think of an idea and use the knowledge taught to build prototypes.

They then made a presentation where we used the following criteria to judge them:

JUDGING CRITERIA

• Team

• Innovation

• Cloud

• Implementation

• Demo

After using the above criteria, the following teams made it to the top three:

1. Maji Fadhi

2. Smart Hatchery

3. Smart Diapers

All of them were then awarded Intel branded giveaways. Random questions were also asked about Intel Architecture and correct answers guaranteed an attendee a present.