Blogs

Announcing a New Free Curriculum: IoT for Beginners
Announcing a New Free Curriculum: IoT for Beginners

It is our very great pleasure to announce the release of a new, free, MIT-licensed open-source curriculum all about the Internet of Things: IoT for Beginners. Brought to you by a team of Azure Cloud Advocates, Program Managers, and Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors, we hope to empower students of …

Using TinyML to identify farts
Using TinyML to identify farts

TLDR; Find a complete hands-on lab to build a TinyML audio classifier at github.com/microsoft/iot-curriculum/tree/main/labs/tiny-ml/audio-classifier. My 8-year-old daughter bought me “Farts - a spotters guide” - a book with some buttons down the side and when you press them, they make …

Installing Scikit-Learn on a Apple Silicon
Installing Scikit-Learn on a Apple Silicon

At the end of last year I splashed out on a shiny new Apple MacBookAir with the M1 processor as I was fed up with an old Intel-based MacBookPro that was quite honestly crippled by corporate anti-virus software. Out the box this machine is amazing. It’s ridiculously fast, and lasts for ever on …

Build a virtual IoT Lab with Raspberry Pis and Azure IoT Hub
Build a virtual IoT Lab with Raspberry Pis and Azure IoT Hub

The rise of virtual education has led to sweeping changes in how students are taught. A lot of computer science lessons can be run with only small changes thanks to the cloud - Azure Lab Services can provide virtual machines with developer tooling, or GitHub Codespaces can replace the physical lab …

What is edge computing, why do it, why send IoT data to the cloud?
What is edge computing, why do it, why send IoT data to the cloud?

I recently had a student reach out to me with some great questions around Edge computing and how it matches to IoT, and indeed why even use the cloud with IoT. They have to write a paper on the difference between edge computing and just using the cloud, and were researching these terms and trying to …

Control holiday lights with Python, Azure IoT and Power Apps
Control holiday lights with Python, Azure IoT and Power Apps

As the nights draw in here in the northern hemisphere, there are a number of winter celebrations that happen - and one thing they all have in common is lights. In the past I’ve just purchased strings of lights from the nearest retailer, strung them up to a tree or around my house, and fought …

Run Visual Studio Code on a Raspberry Pi
Run Visual Studio Code on a Raspberry Pi

It’s finally here! An official supported version of VS Code that runs on a Raspberry Pi! ICYMI: VS Code now officially supports @Raspberry_Pi too! 🍰 ➡️ Download the Linux ARM and ARM64 builds here: https://t.co/aMc3pDFkDu pic.twitter.com/gsATu20K4X — Visual Studio Code (@code) October …

Building smart garden ornaments with a Raspberry Pi and micro:bits
Building smart garden ornaments with a Raspberry Pi and micro:bits

Ever wanted to track things happening in your garden, neighborhood or school using smart garden ornaments? Now you can using BBC micro:bits and a cloud-based IoT service. TL;DR: check out this project on GitHub for a weeks worth of fun to do with families, friends or in the classroom using a …

Raspberry Pi cloud-connected Hat Cam
Raspberry Pi cloud-connected Hat Cam

This project builds a wearable, cloud connected camera. This is useful in situations where you want a record of what the camera sees stored in the cloud as quickly as possible. Make sure you use this in compliance will all applicable laws and privacy considerations.

Recognizing words on a microcontroller using TinyML
Recognizing words on a microcontroller using TinyML

Learn how to train a TinyML word recognizer to run on a microcontroller using Azure ML Studio and the Adafruit EdgeBadge.

Let your family know you are in meetings with an IoT Busy light
Let your family know you are in meetings with an IoT Busy light

Like a lot of folks at the moment, I’m working for home and my child is off school. For those reading this in the future and wondering why, I am currently living in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic and worldwide toilet paper shortages. One of the upsides of working from home, especially when …

Setting an Azure IoT Hub connection string in code on an MXChip
Setting an Azure IoT Hub connection string in code on an MXChip

Learn how to set the Azure IoT Hub connection string on an MXChip board in code.