Exploring Raspberry Pi

Chapter 12The Internet of Things

This chapter describes how the Raspberry Pi can be used as a core building block of the Internet of Things (IoT). In this chapter, you are introduced to the concepts of network programming, the IoT, and the connection of sensors to the Internet. Several different communications architectures are described: The first architecture configures the RPi to be a web server that uses various server-side scripting techniques to display sensor data. Next, custom C/C++ code is described that can push sensor data to the Internet and to platform as a service (PaaS) offerings, such as ThingSpeak and the IBM Bluemix IoT service (using MQTT). Finally, a client/server pair for high-speed Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) socket communication is described. The latter part of the chapter introduces some techniques for managing distributed RPi sensors, and physical networking topics: setting the RPi to have a static IP address; and using Power over Ethernet (PoE) with the RPi. By the end of this chapter, you should be able to build your own full-stack IoT devices.

Equipment Required for This Chapter:

• Raspberry Pi (any model with an Internet connection)
• Sensors: temperature sensor (optional)

Further details on this chapter are available at www.exploringrpi.com/chapter12/.

The Internet of Things (IoT)

The terms Internet of Things (IoT) and cyber-physical systems (CPS) are broadly used to describe the extension of the web and the Internet into the physical realm, ...