Connect & Analyze sensor data from Smart BLE SensorTag: On IBM Watson IoT Platform and on Raspberry Pi

We have seen the availability of several devices, thick and thin, big and small, heavy and light, bulk to sleek, that helps capture data from the sensors associated with them. Number of sensors and the type of data they are meant to capture, defines the variety of sensor data that the sensor device is equipped to share.

The SimpleLink™ SensorTag, offered by Texas Instruments, is definitely one of the devices, that's thin, small and sleek, with 10 different types of low power MEMS sensors (light, digital microphone, magnetic sensor, humidity, pressure, accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer, object temperature, and ambient temperature), to help capture sensor data from the surrounding environment. The Bluetooth offering 'Bluetooth Smart' is capable of capturing the sensor data within a radius of 50 Meters or 150 Feet, thus covering a good ground.

IBM Internet of Things Foundation is a fully managed, cloud-hosted service, where you can easily add and manage devices, control access to IoT service, monitor usage, storage and access to sensor data, perform device management, etc. 

Using the Android and iOS app, as provided by Texas Instruments, you can now fetch the sensor data from the TI SensorTag and upload them directly on to the cloud, i.e to IBM Internet of Things Foundation (IoTF). The TI SensorTag can be connected to Raspberry Pi device using a Bluetooth dongle to store and access the sensor data. Once the data is available on the Raspberry Pi device, you can leverage the API's, client libraries to speed up development efforts in the language of your choice, to perform analytics, derive results, enhance decision making and drive the business.

"CC2650 SimpleLink™ Bluetooth® Smart BLE SensorTag" is a crisp, short IoT Recipe, that details how simple and easy it is, to connect a Texas Instruments SensorTag to the IBM Watson IoT Platform in under 3 minutes. The recipe talks about how you can ready the values from 10 different low power MEMS sensors on to the SimpleLink SensorTag app and the upload the same to the cloud, i.e to IBM Internet of Things Foundation (IoTF). Once the data is available on the cloud, it's opens up a whole lot of avenues for monitoring, analytics and decision making, using the Bluemix services to speed up the application development efforts.

Another IoT Recipe, titled "TI Sensor Tag and Raspberry Pi", takes you through step by step process to integrate the SimpleLink SensorTag with Raspberry Pi device using Bluetooth technology. The recipe details about the usage of two utilities - 'gatttool' and 'hcitool', that shall demonstrate how to use Bluetooth to connect and get sensor readings from a TI CC2650 SensorTag to a Raspberry Pi device.

I'll sign off for now, leaving you to think about whole lot of possibilities, as to, how quickly and easily, you can create an application using the services available on IBM Bluemix, by integrating the devices, uploading the data on to the cloud, for real time and near real time analytics and leveraging the API's, Client libraries & Recipes, that are readily available on the Watson IoT platform.

Showcasing couple of pictorial representations that can be developed into use cases while you work with TI SensorTag, IBM Internet of Things Foundation and Raspberry Pi device

A strategic course on Watson IoT, now available on Coursera: Open to registrations!

'Internet of Things (IoT)' has been a buzz word for quite some time now. It stresses on the importance of 'Right Data' as against 'Big Data', for real time decision making and cognitive analytics. It is radically changing the way businesses operate and people interact with the physical world. Fueled by technological innovations around Cloud and Analytic's, it is creating waves, resulting in rapid growth area for many businesses today. 

For all the enthusiastic developers, who are willing to equip their skill sets on IoT, lay their hands on connected set of physical devices, open up their innovation minds with the possibilities that can be achieved, IBM has teamed up with Coursera, to channelize the education on IoT and reduce the learning curve, to announce the availability of a new course offering 'A developer's guide to the Internet of Things (IoT)', on Coursera site.

Kevin Turner, Program Director, Innovation Strategy - IoT Developer Ecosystem, IBM, confirmed that IBM has teamed up with Coursera to deliver a developer's guide to the Internet of Things.

The course offering is designed for entry level introduction to developing solutions on Internet of Things, mainly focusing on capturing the data from interconnected set of devices and have them securely transferred to cloud platform, for further analytic's, making use of several services that are already available. The programming assignments of the course shall assist in building IoT solutions using Node-Red, a rapid application development environment, leveraging pre-built blocks of code and enabling all hands-on exercises on Raspberry Pi devices.

The course offering 'A developer's guide to the Internet of Things (IoT)', is scheduled to start in the month of May, 2016. Upon successful completion of the course, the user / attendee shall be presented with theCourse Certificate, that helps to get recognized with an achievement from IBM and Coursera.

Can't wait to lay your hands on Internet of Things? Then, get started with IBM Watson Internet of Things. There are several 'Do It Youserlf (DIY), Explore Watson IoT Platform on Raspberry Pi recipes at IBM developerWorks. Get to know in detail about Watson IoT in the Cognitive era.