Episode 99: Azure IoT

00:00:10 Matt Welcome everyone to the.net MAUI podcast. We're here to keep you up to date with the latest and greatest and net client development. We'll talk about some Azure, some Visual Studio, and of course .net. 00:00:29 Matt i'm Matt Soucoup and today we have a. 00:00:30 Matt Special show we're going. 00:00:31 Matt To talk about all things Azure IoT and the new app built with Xamarin. 00:00:36 Matt That lets you easily try out some of the features of Azure IoT and get some real world experience for yourself. 00:00:43 Matt I'm joined today by Stefan Wick and Reto Mendez, Pablos from the Azure IoT team and Ben. 00:00:49 Matt Buttigieg from Microsoft. 00:00:51 Matt Modern apps customer advisory team. 00:00:54 Matt So I'm going to start out by asking what the heck Azure or what the heck Io T is. Andwhy.net devs should care. 00:01:00 Matt But first, Steven, would you like to introduce yourself to our listeners? 00:01:03 Matt That gives a little bit of background on yourself. 00:01:06 Stefan Sure, thanks for having me Matt. 00:01:07 Stefan I'm glad glad to be here. 00:01:08 Stefan My name is Stefan Wick. 00:01:10 Stefan I'm a lead program manager in Azure IoT. 00:01:13 Stefan The group I'm leading in Azure is responsible for all things on the client side of Azure IoT, which is all about enabling device and solution developers to. 00:01:24 Stefan Build great, powerful, scalable IoT solutions on Azure and the the parts that my team is responsible for. 00:01:35 Stefan Our focus on the device builder persona such as our real time operating system, Azure Autos. 00:01:45 Stefan Which is a complete embedded development suite for constrained devices and our IoT Edge runtime for edge computing, connectivity and protocol support. 00:01:57 Stefan As well as our device SDK's that enable connectivity connectivity for really any type of device of any size in any programming language that that you know you want to use and you know this is also where.net comes in this is you know where where Maui and and and Xamarin. 00:02:18 Stefan Scenarios can come in also we weenable.net developers to, you know, connect their their devices and and and their gateways to Azure IO T you know with our SDK tools and and the guidance we have. 00:02:36 Matt And the tools is like they're really powerful, and some of the things that we'll end up talking about today that the app can do is really, I was blown away. 00:02:44 Matt But first, before we get going reto same question to you, would you introduce yourself and give us a little bit about your background? 00:02:51 Rido Sure, thanks for having me. 00:02:54 Rido I'm radio recording it. 00:02:56 Rido I'm originally from Spain, but I've been working in. 00:03:01 Rido I don't need the babies or studio team in the deep and then move to Azure IoT where I'm in touch with the developer experience working with Step 4 device developers and making sure that our SDK's. 00:03:14 Rido Are the best SDK is to make the Super easy to connect to to Azure IoT and I'm focused on the tooling they develop, experiences, docs, samples and I'm also the tech lead of IoT plug and play that that's one of the core technologies that we use to build this. 00:03:34 Matt And it's a really cool thing that, yeah, we'll get into that as well. 00:03:38 Matt And yeah, it's it's almost like magical type stuff. 00:03:41 Matt But we're going to save it. 00:03:43 Matt We're going to talk about it in a bit and but Ben, same question. 00:03:46 Matt To you. 00:03:46 Ben Hey yeah my name is Ben Buttigieg. 00:03:49 Ben I'm a senior software engineer on the modern client apps customer advisory team. 00:03:54 Ben My background is in Xamarin and I've been at the company for over 5 years now supporting customers. 00:04:02 Ben Advising them as the title suggests, get the most out of Xamarin and be able to produce some high quality enterprise apps following the best practices. 00:04:13 Ben So yes, I'm really keen to help. 00:04:16 Ben The guys here create the Xamarin app for IO T plug and play. 00:04:21 Ben It was really good fun. 00:04:22 Matt Yeah, and then. 00:04:23 Matt The app itself is a beautiful app, it's it's. 00:04:26 Matt It's a great. 00:04:27 Matt It's a great. 00:04:28 Matt Every time I see a good looking app it's like all right. 00:04:30 Matt We can actually do this. 00:04:31 Matt So salmon. 00:04:31 Matt Just because every app I create, it's just you know, text on a text. 00:04:35 Matt On a screen. 00:04:36 Matt But we'll talk about it. 00:04:38 Matt But it's better than good looking app 'cause it actually does a lot of cool things too. 00:04:42 Matt Right, but first what I want to. 00:04:43 Matt Talk about though, is. 00:04:45 Matt It's it's a wide open question because every time I think of IoT, I think of things like a like a smart thermostat or like making an LED blank, but it's it's so much more than that and so I. 00:04:58 Matt Want to help? 00:04:59 Matt Me and all our listeners out kind of level set of what we mean when we talk about. 00:05:05 Matt IoT in the context of Azure and Stephen, I'm hoping you can help shed some light on that. 00:05:11 Stefan Yeah definitely. 00:05:12 Stefan So the IoT or the Internet of Things is really all things connected to the cloud. 00:05:18 Stefan You know it could be cars, factories, buildings, or you know in this case of the application you know it's it's your phone and another way to think about it. 00:05:29 Stefan It's really about. 00:05:31 Stefan Connecting the physical world to the cloud and and performing the digital transformation of of our physical world and making that accessible. 00:05:44 Stefan Uh, you know two cloud solutions and and cloud developers to you know, gain great insights and and and and and take actions and and just be smarter about you. 00:05:56 Stefan Know how we how we do agriculture or how we how we manage our buildings and so on. 00:06:02 Stefan And so forth. 00:06:04 Stefan And Azure IoT in that context comes in and provides a collection of managed and platform services. 00:06:12 Stefan That go across Edge and cloud that help you connect, monitor and control IoT assets at at a scale of, you know millions or or even billions of devices in your suit. 00:06:25 Matt All right, so that's super cool that you have millions or billions of devices and I'll really like the analogy that you can model the real world onto the cloud because a lot of times when somebody first learning like object oriented programming or like modeling. 00:06:37 Matt Different real-world objects, or really like a chair or something like that into object, but you kind of think of it like you're modeling a real world device like a thermostat or or something like you mentioned from a manufacturing floor into the cloud. 00:06:53 Matt And it does like a whole lot more. 00:06:55 Matt So let's talk about what Azure can do. 00:06:58 Matt Azure IoT can do in a whole lot more because it's composed of a couple of different services and Rita I'm hoping you can enlighten me on what those services are and what they can do. 00:07:11 Rido So Azure IoT is composed for from. 00:07:14 Rido Different services that can help you in your Azure IoT journey. 00:07:18 Rido The first service and the most important is Azure IoT hub. 00:07:22 Rido To say cloud service that allows you to connect different kinds of devices and to the cloud using different protocols and the services. 00:07:32 Rido Also, providing an endpoints to create IoT solutions that can interact with those devices, you can think of a. 00:07:41 Rido You can think of a. 00:07:44 Rido IoT Hub has a gateway that will establish a secure communication channel in bidirectional communication from your devices to the cloud application that you can build in Azure. 00:07:59 Rido The protocols that I mentioned are in Kitty and AMP and these protocols are optimized for constrained devices where maybe you have a limited power or limited bandwidth that can also scale to any kind of edge device with more computing power. 00:08:17 Rido On top of these, and. 00:08:21 Rido This service they Azure IoT hub. 00:08:23 Rido We also have a IoT central. 00:08:26 Rido This is our SaaS offering that will make super easy to interact with those devices and without writing the cloud application. 00:08:37 Rido And this is using. 00:08:40 Rido A modeling language that we will talk about that in a second that it's. 00:08:45 Rido DDL that means digital twins definition language that it's the language that we use to model those devices so. 00:08:55 Rido Services like IoT Central can read those models and create a UI to interact with those devices super easily. 00:09:04 Matt Cool yeah so OK so. 00:09:05 Matt IoT hub Azure IoT hub is I want to say the foundation and then IoT central sits on top of that and provides the UM. 00:09:12 Matt I guess the bad word but more user friendly version of that where you can. 00:09:17 Matt Have the devices interact with and you can see them and manage them that. 00:09:20 Matt Way is that. 00:09:20 Matt Uh, Yep and then alright. 00:09:22 Matt So now we're going to Ben get to you and talk about the application. 00:09:26 Matt The Xamarin app. 00:09:27 Matt So give us a quick rundown of what it is and how it fits into the Azure IoT world. 00:09:37 Ben Chakal so the. 00:09:41 Ben Io T plug and play app. 00:09:44 Ben The Xamarin app is basically designed to illustrate how you can use the features that the IoT central and the plug and play. 00:09:55 Ben Functionality is provided so you can connect really easily to the service simply using a QR code. 00:10:05 Ben So you just point your camera. 00:10:10 Ben At the QR code, which will give it all the information it needs to provision the device and connect to the service and then within a matter of seconds your. 00:10:20 Ben Uhm, sending telemetry from your device from your iOS or Android device to the hub and then you can see that all illustrated on a nice dashboard. 00:10:31 Matt And it's really neat to see that that. 00:10:34 Matt Telemetry light up on the dashboard. 00:10:37 Matt It's almost instantaneous. 00:10:39 Matt As soon as you scan that barcode, it's it provisions everything and it goes with along with that. 00:10:44 Matt And so I'm guessing that's the Azure IoT plug and play portion that that helps you do do all that am I? 00:10:52 Matt Am I guessing right there or not? 00:10:54 Ben Yes, that's right. Yes, alright. 00:10:56 All right? 00:10:57 Ben That the Azure IO T plug and play functionality provides the QR code which encodes all the information needed to be able to connect to the system. 00:11:09 Ben Perhaps Reado can say more about how that's actually created. 00:11:13 Rido Yeah, I think that it's time to talk a little bit more about those in the device interactions. 00:11:18 Rido So in IoT hub we have three different ways to interact with devices. 00:11:24 Rido We have telemetry. 00:11:26 Rido These are device to cloud messages. 00:11:30 Rido Well, usually these messages are used to. 00:11:33 Rido Report data from sensors. 00:11:36 Rido Canonical examples there. 00:11:39 Rido Thermostat or if you want to report temperature or humidity or. 00:11:43 Rido Things like that. 00:11:44 Rido The second one are properties properties is another nice feature of IoT hub that allows to represent the state of the device. 00:11:54 Rido We call this staged and like the twin of the device. 00:11:57 Rido This would be in the device twin and there are two kind of properties reported properties that are the properties reported from the device and desired properties that are the properties that you can set from the cloud side and will be sent to the device and finally. 00:12:15 Rido We have commands that commands are another way to interact with the device. 00:12:20 Rido It's from the cloud, so these three things, telemetry, properties and commands is what we can describe with DDL. 00:12:30 Rido So once you create a model describing the device. 00:12:33 Rido And unifying things like what's the telemetry is with which units, and for example, if you're sending temperature. 00:12:41 Rido If this is Celsius or Fahrenheit, which properties? 00:12:45 Rido This could be a simple values like numbers or this could be complex objects. 00:12:52 Rido That are represented in Jason payloads and the same with commands where you can define what's their request and response. 00:13:00 Rido So once you have your model in the DLL and that represents how to interact with the device. 00:13:08 Rido That model can be discovered by applications like IoT Central and that's the value of IoT plug and play. 00:13:19 Rido So central can work with any device that has a model representing those interactions and that's what makes the. 00:13:28 Rido Connection and super easy. 00:13:30 Rido So it's just to get connected about the QR code and provisioning and we can talk about provisioning with more telling. 00:13:38 Rido 2nd and this is more about how to define those interactions. 00:13:43 Rido So from the solution side. 00:13:46 Rido We can do things like, for example, create a dynamic UI to populate the this complex object properties or or sending commands and see there's the response which means. 00:13:59 Matt It does make sense and thank you for that. 00:14:01 Matt 'cause it's really neat how it just it works, it just works and. 00:14:06 Matt And so let's let's talk stuff. 00:14:07 Matt I want to talk a little bit about the app and specifically the SDK for it, because the net SDK for it is new or recently updated, I should say and. 00:14:18 Matt So if you want to walk us a little bit through what like how the SDK helps the net developer now whether the person is a net Maui or a Xamarin developer justdoing.net development in general, how that helps them use all this and especially now the app source code is going to be open sourced. 00:14:38 Matt And so, how we can use that to do some like real world application development and use it as a like a jump off point. 00:14:46 Stefan Yeah, great question. Mattsoour.net SDK has actually been around for a few years by now, but what's new and what we've updated recently is to extend our region, extend our support to include also Xamarin scenarios, and. 00:15:06 Stefan That that's also what we're showcasing here with this new application. 00:15:10 Stefan But the the application also has it has a very very important and so a couple of very important purposes for us first of all, and you know, as Ben already mentioned, it helps our developers to get started easily with Azure IoT. 00:15:29 Stefan Because if you're if you're new to IoT and you want to explore our services. 00:15:34 Stefan How do you get started right? 00:15:36 Stefan We have you know, device simulators that you can run on your PC or in the cloud. 00:15:41 Stefan But the real device is, you know, the real deal and that that's how you want to explore it and. 00:15:48 Stefan We we thought about it and we we realized everyone has has a device already in in their pocket. 00:15:55 Stefan So you know why not use that to to introduce people to Azure IoT so and you know that's where Xamarin and and the net SDK comes. 00:16:04 Stefan Then that's that's a great way to understand how. 00:16:08 Stefan How does our SDK work? 00:16:11 Stefan How does the service work and and how does all all the interaction work? 00:16:15 Stefan And then you know folks can move on from there too. 00:16:19 Stefan Up to you know other devices that they may want to connect to Azure IoT, including embedded devices or or gateways, but it also is. 00:16:32 Stefan The is a great starting point for for other scenarios. Whereyouknow.net and and Xamarin comes in for for our customers where they may want to build phone solutions or phone applications that connect to downstream sensors that they have. 00:16:52 Stefan In their environment, you know we are we have BLE. 00:16:57 Stefan And then basically make those sort of dumb sensors that are not cloud aware and turn them into, you know, smart cloud connected sensors you know via a phone based application file so so that is 1 great scenario that we we hear a lot of. 00:17:17 Stefan Customers asking us about and and beyond that in.net, this is is actually a very popular language among our IoT developers. In in many scenarios you know beyond. 00:17:33 Stefan Cameron, we're seeing a lot of IoT development in IO T, Gateway and and edge computing scenarios where, for example, we we do AI on on the edge. 00:17:49 Stefan You know for IoT devices. 00:17:53 Stefan And then of course we see a lot of IoT development on the solution side of IoT hub and in IoT Central. 00:18:02 Stefan For applications that that that that sit on top of our platform. 00:18:07 Stefan In the cloud. 00:18:08 Matt So we we we we were talking about making a I guess the the dumb sensor that doesn't have any connectivity outside like Bluetooth. 00:18:16 Matt Connect that to your phone. Make a xamarinappobviously.netusethe.net SDK and then you hook that up to IO T. 00:18:24 Matt Hub right? 00:18:25 Matt So all of a sudden now you have a dumb sensor that's cloud enabled and I had never thought through that that scenario before and all of a sudden the light goes off. 00:18:32 Matt And that wow, that makes total sense. 00:18:35 Matt Yeah, that's that's super cool. 00:18:36 Matt So one of the things I always like hearing about IoT solutions step on. 00:18:41 Matt And maybe you can help me out with is like what are some of your. 00:18:44 Matt As you worked with a lot of the of your customers, what were some of your favorite or maybe even the most innovative, innovative solutions that they put together? 00:18:53 Matt 'cause that's why I always like hearing about IoT. 00:18:55 Matt Is like you hear. 00:18:56 Matt The scenarios the real world scenarios that people have been using for, and it's always it's inspiring and like kind of makes people want to go out and try new stuff. 00:19:06 Matt So if if you're able to share anything. 00:19:08 Matt Mean that you particularly liked. 00:19:11 Stefan Yeah, it's hard to pick your favorite here. 00:19:13 Stefan It's it's like you know, picking picking among your your your child a favorite. 00:19:20 Stefan But yeah, we're we're seeing a lot of great scenarios and and and great customer value in in in healthcare, for example. 00:19:31 Stefan When when we talk about you know connected product scenarios or connected device scenarios where we help you, you know those medical device manufacturers you know make those devices in a much, much smaller. 00:19:49 Stefan Connect them to the cloud. 00:19:51 Stefan And you know, enable better, better health care for for the patients. 00:19:57 Stefan And you know, make make life easier for for other people who work in healthcare those. 00:20:04 Stefan Those are always great great scenarios with with great outcomes that that I'd like to highlight. 00:20:09 Matt So you always like to hear when the real world apps make a difference. 00:20:14 Matt So Ben, as the developer who put together this app. 00:20:18 Matt Up up so give us a little bit about what you enjoyed about working with the SDK itself. 00:20:25 Matt I mean, how did you? 00:20:26 Matt How did you find the user experience for it? 00:20:28 Matt And 1st, I guess. 00:20:29 Matt Let's let's explain the app. 00:20:30 Matt It's Xamarin forms, right? 00:20:32 Matt So let let's I guess, let's start there so the app will be available into stores in early October, so not at the time. 00:20:38 Matt Publishing, but I'm I'll update the show notes of whenever it is available to the links, so everybody will be able to go download it and use. 00:20:44 Matt Is it? 00:20:45 Matt But yeah, so give us a little bit of overview. 00:20:47 Matt Technically wise of the application, Ben. 00:20:50 Ben Yeah, sure. 00:20:51 Ben So actually this is an evolution of an existing Xamarin forms IoT app. 00:20:58 Ben I've been working on. 00:21:00 Ben Since a couple of years ago when I was originally working with a customer who wanted to have GPS tracking on IoT on Zebra device is I don't know if you're familiar with these zebra portable scanners which have. 00:21:15 Ben They're basically mobile Android. 00:21:20 Ben Uhm, so I I produced the PRC on the back of that which this has now evolved from being an IoT hub client to very easily migrating it to ISC central and plug and play using the Microsoft Azure. 00:21:42 Ben Nu get client. 00:21:43 Ben So if you download that, that will give you your starting point. 00:21:47 Ben To connect and use the the functionality of RC sent. 00:21:52 Ben And and then the there's a few stages that were involved and the the the the initial one is to provision your device. 00:22:01 Ben So without iety plug and play you have to have a provisioning service setup. 00:22:09 Ben So DPS service which you connect to and get back. 00:22:15 Ben Uhm, credentials to be at something to connect your device and authenticator essentially. 00:22:23 Ben So once that's done, then you can. 00:22:27 Ben Connect to the service and you'll see this all in the code. 00:22:30 Ben I've tried to create. 00:22:32 Ben The app make the app as readable as possible, so you'll see that there's dedicated services and interfaces. 00:22:40 Ben Which you know clearly highlight the the major functional areas. 00:22:43 Ben So if you're interested in looking at the code, you'll see the. 00:22:51 Ben I IO T device client service which is the the primary service for connecting and disconnecting, sending telemetry and and receiving. 00:23:00 Ben Device twin properties and command handlers so so so with that you can. 00:23:12 Ben Review that as a a good example for how you would approach creating your own Xamarin. 00:23:20 Ben I it's the device client. 00:23:22 Matt And one of the things I I thought it's super interesting about the what the app and actually how it just interacts with Azure IoT is that. 00:23:31 Matt You can one of the features it has is that you can actually turn on the flash of the camera by hitting a button. 00:23:39 Matt Over in on the web portal of Azure IoT central so. 00:23:42 Ben Yeah, that's a really. 00:23:43 Ben Cool feature, sorry. 00:23:44 Matt Yeah so yeah no because normally you think about that. 00:23:48 Matt I mean essentially that's a push notification to me, right? 00:23:50 Matt And so me being you know, I'm I I. 00:23:54 Matt I don't know anything about the IoT world and no. 00:23:58 Matt So now when I'm thinking about alright in order to do something like that, I'm going to have to send a silent push notification through my phone, which means I'm. 00:24:04 Matt Registering through, you know, Apns and all that other. 00:24:07 Matt Stuff to get that to work. 00:24:09 Matt But here you don't have to do that, so I guess Ben I'll. 00:24:14 Matt I'll throw out to you. 00:24:15 Matt But Steven Arido, feel free to chime in on this. 00:24:17 Matt How does that functionality work there? 00:24:19 Matt I mean, it's 'cause it's not a push notification as as traditional in a mobile device goes. 00:24:25 Matt So how does that work? 00:24:26 Rido I can take this one and. 00:24:29 Rido So how it works is in using some of these features of the MQTT. 00:24:36 Rido That allows their device to subscribe to a topic, so when anyone writes something to that topic, then this bidirectional channel is triggered and then the the SDK uses a new event that you can subscribe to saying hey. 00:24:56 Rido You have a a new command request, so this is how this bidirectional communication happens without push notifications, because then Kitty and amqp protocols allow us to send data back to the device. 00:25:12 Rido So this is how it's happening under the covers. 00:25:17 Matt And that's all wrapped up nicely in the SDK, so you don't actually have to go down and do the like the low level fix on programming. 00:25:25 Rido So the SDK is abstracting how these subscription to topics works. 00:25:33 Rido So the SDK is subscribing to the right topic under the covers and from fromyour.net developer experience you just get a new event that will trigger on your phone. 00:25:45 Rido And these events. 00:25:46 Rido Happens for these two cloud to device messages for. 00:25:50 Rido Command support for desired properties. 00:25:53 Ben Yep, now just to add to that, if I may the to subscribe to that event, you simply need to call set desired property, update callback and that will allow you to attach a callback handler for that command and then you can do whatever you want. 00:26:11 Ben So in the. 00:26:12 Ben The case of the flashlight sensor. 00:26:14 Ben We just have a light on a command handler and that's registered. 00:26:20 Ben But in with one line and it will get executed instantly when you execute that from the service. 00:26:27 Matt Side so does the app need to be in the foreground and running or is that going to work regardless? 00:26:34 Rido I think that the the current version only works on foreground, but that's something that we are in considering for future releases. 00:26:43 Matt You're listening for messages at the time, and so it makes total sense that you would have it in in the foreground and and and doing that, so Rita, I'll leave this one. 00:26:52 Matt Umm, So what do you like? 00:26:54 Matt I mean, as far as the app goes, what was your your favorite feature that you had implemented and shown off with it? 00:27:03 Rido Well, I think that what is really cool about this app is how we make it super easy to connect to the cloud and using this QR code flow. 00:27:12 Rido So, So what happens here is that to establish this secure channel with with hub, the device needs to have an identity, and that identity includes what type of credentials do you want to use. ID hub supports X509 certificates and shared access keys, so these are keys. 00:27:32 Rido That and required to create a token that will last for by default this 10 minutes or so, and with the QR code when we are doing is to make this super easy to put those credentials on the device without asking the user to copy paste anything. 00:27:50 Rido So that's one of the experiences that we think that we make super easy to understand and to get the device connected without sharing keys and manually over email or or copy paste here and there. 00:28:07 Rido So with with these QR code we enable. 00:28:11 Rido These two flows you can. 00:28:13 Rido Connect to central because central under the covers also use the device provisioning service or if you want to understand how things work in low level you can also configure your DPS instance and have and see the messages and the traffic from from IoT hub directly. 00:28:32 Rido And I think that that's my favorite part. 00:28:35 Rido How can we use the same QR code to connect to one or the other based on on the customer needs? 00:28:41 Matt I think the whole app itself is actually pretty cool about how everything is working there, but yet, that's yeah, the whole the connection area is I. 00:28:48 Matt I like a lot and still so Steven I'm going to throw the exact same question over. 00:28:52 Matt To you, you're. 00:28:53 Matt You're listening to the show. 00:28:54 Matt Step on and you're you were going to recommend one thing that you want to have. 00:28:57 Matt People just check out what? 00:28:59 Matt What would it be? 00:29:01 Stefan Yeah, for me it's the simplicity of the whole thing that gets you started with a complete IoT solution in literally under 2 minutes, right? 00:29:13 Stefan So you know a a new customer or a new developer can walk up to this and. 00:29:20 Stefan You know, without having anything in installed or not knowing anything about IoT, they can, you know, create an instance of IoT central you know? 00:29:31 Stefan Or or IoT hub if they want to go lower level on the platform server. 00:29:36 Stefan This you know, scan the QR code and have a real device connected to their cloud solution. 00:29:46 Stefan You know in in under two minutes and they see the. 00:29:50 Stefan You know real sensor telemetry flowing in. 00:29:52 Stefan They they have command and control capabilities. 00:29:56 Stefan You know from the cloud to the device you know all all working you know ready to go in in under 2 minutes. 00:30:03 Stefan You know without. 00:30:04 Stefan Installing anything without, you know, writing, writing a line of code or or or even you know, typing anything so that that's for me. 00:30:13 Stefan The you know most fascinating aspect of all this, and I think it's it's. 00:30:21 Stefan It's really inspiring. 00:30:24 Stefan We we hope it's inspiring for folks to, then, you know, get get deeper into IoT and explore all the capabilities that Azure IO T offers. 00:30:34 Rido If I may, I'd like to add another point here that it's one of their favorite features that I've seen when I show the app to to to people, that's where they really understand all the concepts. 00:30:46 Rido And it's the fact that when you send for example, the telemetry for the location of the phone we are using this DDL model and. 00:30:54 Rido We said that this telemetry is a Geo. 00:30:56 Rido Point, so just by saying that because if you look at the at the Jason, we are just sending a Jason payload with latitude and longitude. 00:31:06 Rido But what happens is that central sees that in the model this is at your location and then shows automatically a map with your location with no code. 00:31:17 Rido No maps is the case. 00:31:19 Rido So just by saying, hey, this station is a Geo point. 00:31:23 Rido Then central is able to show them up and I found that this is the feature where people said oh wow, that's super easy to to create a tracker or thing like that. 00:31:32 Matt Yeah, the ability to actually get started so quickly is actually really it is. 00:31:36 Matt It's it's. 00:31:36 Matt If I met you mentioned it's inspiring and I I like the fact that you you snap. 00:31:41 Matt Essentially open up your camera, go to the QR code and that's. 00:31:46 Matt You're pretty much it. 00:31:47 Matt You're on your way there. 00:31:49 Matt It's in your able to use everything from there and and the app itself is. 00:31:53 Matt Yeah, it is sending a bunch of different telemetry, including as you mentioned, reado. 00:31:57 Matt Uh, Geo location I. 00:32:00 Matt I think it's even sending Ben you're gonna have to help me out here like altitude. 00:32:05 Ben Altitude yes, accelerometer data. 00:32:07 Ben Basically everything that you can get from the device through Xamarin Essentials. 00:32:13 Ben We're providing in payloads to IoT hub so. 00:32:18 Ben The accelerometer information pressure bro. 00:32:20 Ben But and and yeah, number, yes, this is a Geo location and several others. 00:32:27 Matt And so you also get to see how you get to access all that device info from the device, so that's that's neat as well. 00:32:34 Matt With that said, both the app will be out on the app stores. As I mentioned the the code itself will be out on GitHub and open source when the app comes out and we're going to have documentation as well on it on docs.microsoft.com that go over the. 00:32:47 Matt That goes over. 00:32:48 Matt The app as well or and and the dot net SDK that was used to build it. 00:32:53 Matt So all very cool and so before we switch it over to pick up the pod Ben step on a re. 00:32:59 Matt Do you have anything else you'd like to add about the app or about Azure IoT? 00:33:04 Stefan One thing I I just want to add here is that I think this wall. 00:33:09 Stefan This is really just the start too. 00:33:12 Stefan To to to a journey where there is more, more to come. 00:33:18 Stefan We we talked about, you know, connecting downstream sensors you know we are. 00:33:24 Stefan We are. 00:33:25 Stefan We are an app to IO T services so so that is. 00:33:28 Stefan Some something we're we're looking at to, you know, provide you know more samples and and guidance on and and then I think there's also an interesting scenario. 00:33:39 Stefan For example, for Xamarin apps on the solution side. 00:33:45 Stefan Right where, where, where the the app connects to to the cloud side of IO T and can then be used to control, you know a number of devices that are connected to the service. 00:34:00 Matt I guess I just highly recommend the. 00:34:02 Matt App that everybody. 00:34:03 Matt Check it out, download the code and play around with it. 00:34:06 Matt So alright, so with that, then pick up the pod. 00:34:10 Matt 2nd Every podcast we like to talk about what everybody else is digging. 00:34:23 Matt Whether it's something work related, software library or or Azure service or whatever, or something totally else book TV show. 00:34:30 Matt Some music, so I'll start out. 00:34:32 Matt I saw this actually on a on a on a teams chat. 00:34:36 Matt Kind of a water cooler teams chat and it's it's called the old net. 00:34:41 Matt Theoldnet.com and what it does. It's like a proxy over the Internet Wayback machine, and so if you set your. 00:34:49 Matt Uhm, your proxy to ittheold.com and then the. 00:34:53 Matt Port to a. 00:34:53 Matt Year like let's say 1996. 00:34:56 Matt It's going to show you the Internet as it existed back then, so you can go browse it and look. 00:35:01 Matt You know, as things were back then, so it's like. 00:35:04 Matt Yeah, it brings you back in time. 00:35:06 Matt The old net com. 00:35:07 Matt It's kind of. 00:35:08 Matt It's goofy, it's. 00:35:09 Matt Stupid, but it brings you back to the day when the Internet was. 00:35:13 Matt Was in its infancy, so the old net. 00:35:16 Matt Com kind of need to check out. 00:35:19 Matt So Ben for you. 00:35:20 Matt What's your pick of the pod? 00:35:22 Ben So mine's a mixture of work and pleasure, uhm, so I've got I'm I'm quite interested in energy efficiency and I've got solar panels in my house and an EV and I. 00:35:35 Ben Been trying to find a way to maximize the usage of the solar panels to charge the EV when I'm getting maximum supply and currently I'm having to do that manually. 00:35:47 Ben So on hot you know summer day I'll turn on the charger, but I'm looking away to the both of the EV and the solar panels. 00:35:55 Ben Have an API so I'm looking at a way to connect the two via IoT central UM, so that and and get a dashboard of consumption and supply and have it automatically trigger a charge when the supply is over 3 kilowatts. 00:36:14 Ben So it should be called Bo, and that's going planning to do that for Hack Week, which is coming up in in a few weeks time, so it should be a fun little Hack Week project. 00:36:23 Matt Yeah, it's super cool. 00:36:25 Matt And you have to keep. 00:36:26 Matt It keep everybody updated with. 00:36:27 Matt That you have to twitch or live stream or blog about that for sure. 00:36:30 Speaker 1 OK. 00:36:32 Matt Cool all right, Steven, your pick of the pod. 00:36:34 Stefan Yeah, well mine is not as creative I will admit and maybe a little more work related, but I'm actually. 00:36:40 Stefan Be excited to get into the the latest Maui preview. 00:36:46 Stefan You and and I don't just say it because I'm I'm on your show here for me it's it's excited to you know get get back and and deeper into UX development and in cross platform development earlier in my career at Microsoft I was I was working on WPF and then. 00:37:06 Stefan Later on Silverlight, so it's exciting for me to see kind of a refreshed take here at at, you know, cross platform. 00:37:13 Stefan Uh, UI frameworks, so, so that's where I'm currently spending some of my. 00:37:21 Matt And we love to hear your feedback on it. 00:37:24 Matt As always, the team is always looking to improve, so anything you have send back at us. 00:37:29 Stefan Will do. 00:37:29 Matt So all right. 00:37:31 Matt Andrea, what do you have pic of the pod? 00:37:33 Rido Well mine is not work related, so I mean she said I play bass but I recently got a new guitar and started cluster. 00:37:42 Rido So this is where I'm spending my free time these days. 00:37:45 Matt Right so I just I just got a new digital piano. 00:37:48 Matt I haven't played for years, but I'm yeah I'm trying to pick it back up and. 00:37:53 Matt It's it's nice to actually go to a different world and not have to think about. 00:37:57 Matt Work anymore longer. 00:38:02 Matt Thank you very much for joining me today. 00:38:04 Matt This has been fascinating. 00:38:06 Matt World of IoT is is is amazing and now that we have an apple that gets gets everybody up and running so they can explore it on their own. 00:38:16 Matt Highly recommend to check it out. 00:38:18 Matt There's no reason right? 00:38:19 Matt As simple as scanning a barcode, they can go along with the code as you play with the app. 00:38:23 Matt So with that thanks again guys. 00:38:26 Matt Really appreciate it and this has been the Net Maui podcast.