Learning IoT with Particle Photon and Electron

Develop applications on one of the most popular platforms for IoT using Particle Photon and Electron with this fast-paced guide

About This Book

• Get an introduction to IoT architecture, command-line build tools and applications of IoT devices and sensors
• Design and develop connected IoT applications using Particle Photon and Electron in a step-by-step manner, gaining an entry point into the field of IoT
• Get tips on troubleshooting IoT applications

Who This Book Is For

This book is for developers, IoT enthusiasts and hobbyists who want to enhance their knowledge of IoT machine-to-machine architecture using Particle Photon and Electron, and implement cloud-based IoT projects.

What You Will Learn

• Setup the Particle Photon and Electron on the cloud using the command-line tools
• Build and deploy applications on the Photon and Electron using the Web-based IDE
• Setup a local cloud server to interact with Particle Photon and Electron
• Connect various components and sensors to Particle Photon and Electron
• Tinker with the existing firmware and deploy a custom firmware on the Photon and Electron
• Setup communication between two or more Particle Photon and Electron
• Debug and troubleshoot Particle Photon and Electron projects
• Use webhooks to communicate with various third-party server applications

In Detail

IoT is basically the network of physical devices, vehicles, buildings and other items—embedded with electronics, software, sensors, actuators, and network connectivity that enable these objects to collect and exchange data.. The number of connected devices is growing rapidly and will continue to do so over years to come. By 2020, there will be more than 20 billion connected devices and the ability to program such devices will be in high demand. Particle provides prototyping boards for IoT that are easy to program and deploy. Most importantly, the boards provided by Particle can be connected to the Internet very easily as they include Wi-Fi or a GSM module.

Starting with the basics of programming Particle Photon and Electron, this book will take you through setting up your local servers and running custom firmware, to using the Photon and Electron to program autonomous cars. This book also covers in brief a basic architecture and design of IoT applications. It gives you an overview of the IoT stack. You will also get information on how to debug and troubleshoot Particle Photon and Electron and set up your own debugging framework for any IoT board. Finally, you'll tinker with the firmware of the Photon and Electron by modifying the existing firmware and deploying them to your boards.

By the end of this book, you should have a fairly good understanding of the IoT ecosystem and you should be able to build standalone projects using your own local server or the Particle Cloud Server.

Style and approach

This project-based guide contains easy-to-follow steps to program Particle Photon and Electron. You will learn to build connected applications with the help of projects of increasing complexity, and with each project, a new concept in IoT is taught.