Basic Azure IoT Flow : From Event Hub via Stream Analytics to Power Bi

Introduction

A few weeks back I posted a blog post on how you can leverage “serverless” components for IoT. Today I’ll show you what it would mean if we replace the Azure Functions component in that post by Azure Stream Analytics.

 

Flow

So the flow between device and event hub is untouched. Though we’ll replace the functions part with Azure Stream Analytics. So how will the end result look?

We’ll be using one Stream Analytics job to trigger three flows. One will store the data into an Azure Table Storage, another on will store it as a JSON file on to Azure Blob Storage and another one will stream it directly into a PowerBi dataset.

So let’s take a look at all the components from within this Stream Analytics Flow we’ll be using…

Azure IoT : From RaspberryPi with Sensor to Azure Storage Table by using a serverless architecture

Introduction

A few days ago my connectors arrived for my latest PoC on Azure. So today I’m writing about my experience in using a RaspberryPi with a temperature & humidity sensor and to save the telemetry data in Azure. For this we’ll be using Azure Event Hub as an ingress mechanism, and Azure Functions to storage the events towards an Azure Storage Account. My next venture will be to use this data to create reports and maybe (on the long run) do some machine learning. For the latter, I’m pondering about linking this system to my ebus system of my heating system. That way I could correlate the data from the various censors (RPi, Thermostat & outside sensor) in combination with the heater information & heating schedules. Basically… creating my own  Google Nest. 🙂

 

Sensor : Physical Connection (I2C)

The guys from ThingTank had a spare sensor lying around, which they lend to me for my PoC… This was a “Grove – Temperature&Humidity Sensor (High-Accuracy & Mini)“. As you can see in the picture, underneath, this one has an I2C connector. We see four connections ; GND, VCC, SDA & SCL.

Azure Functions : A quick demo when using Event Hub

Introduction

Azure functions is the “serverless” offering on Azure. Serverless doesn’t mean there aren’t any servers, but it’s rather a platform service where you can run your own snippets of code. Each code can be triggered, where it then can have an in and/or output. In terms of billing, you pay for the amount of runtime you consume.

Imagine having a stateless web front end which publishes state onto a queue or storage account. Then Azure functions is being triggered and your business logic starts. Sounds familiar? Yes, because that’s a typical flow you normally do in your application stacks. Now you can segment that even more into services you do not need to manage.

 

Demo

Today I’m going to show you a very brief demo on using an Azure Event Hub as trigger/input for an Azure function. So what’s the flow we’ll be doing?

• A client will put a message on the event hub queue
• This will trigger an Azure function
• The function will save the contents of the message onto a storage account

Sound simple right? And it actually is that simple to do too!