Node.js - Connected Weather Station

Getting Started

This is a step-by-step guide to preparing your computer for the Connected Weather Station labs.

Table of Contents

Preparing for the Connected Weather Station Labs

This lab series will teach you how to build a simple Cloud-connected weather station that will send temperature and barometric pressure data to the Cloud. You will use Microsoft Power BI to create reports on the data.

Bill of Materials

For this workshop you will need one of the following:

The IoT Gateway Pattern

In this lab you will build a solution using a ‘Gateway’ pattern, where a device (the Gateway) collects data from one or more connected devices/sensors and aggregates the data before sending it to the cloud. For the gateway, you will use Node.js and Johnny-Five &emdash; an open source framework for interacting with hardware which works as a baseline control kit for hardware projects, including Arduino, Particle Photon, Raspberry Pi, Beagle Bone, and Intel Edison boards. This enables you to write applications in JavaScript that can run as a gateway either on your computer or on a hub device (like a Raspberry Pi 2 or Arduino Yún) connected to an variety of devices.

The Gateway Pattern

Install a Code Editor

If you don’t already have one installed, pick a text/code editor. Feel free to use anything you like, provided it won’t inject any extra text into your files.

Some Options:

Install Node.js

In the labs you will write small programs that will run on your computer, connected to your Thing. These programs will be written in JavaScript and will run as Node.js apps. If you are not familiar or experienced with Node.js, don’t worry. You will learn everything you need to know for these labs in these labs.

Install the latest Long-Term Support (LTS) relase from nodejs.org (while writing this, the latest was v4.4.3 LTS).

Set Up a Development Directory

Prepare a place to save all of your work in the labs. We recommend an easy to navigate to directory with a relatively short path. Create a new folder/directory for the labs:

Windows

  C:\Development\IoTLabs

Mac OS X

  ~/Development/IoTLabs

Create a Microsoft Azure Trial Account

In this lab series you will use Microsoft Azure as the cloud backend for your IoT solution. If you don’t already have an Azure account, go to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/free-trial/ to start a free trial of Microsoft Azure. You may need a credit card for identity verification but the trial is completely free. If you have an MSDN Subscription you may be eligible for free credits to Microsoft Azure every month. Check your MSDN account page for details.

Conclusion & Next Steps

In this lab you prepared your development machine for the following labs. Next you will set up the Microsoft Azure IoT Hub that will be the Cloud back-end for your project.

Continue to the next labs based on the device you are working with.

Go to ‘Setting Up Your Arduino’ ›

Go to ‘Setting Up Your Particle Photon’ ›