Not Just Another Workshop

In closing out 2020 and before going on leave, I was given an opportunity (never a challenge). And it came in the form of these Oracle Code Cards. For those that haven’t seen them, this is what they look like and here is a git repository of some code explaining more about the cards themselves that I’m revamping – https://github.com/jlowe000/codecard.

An trial using the Oracle Code Card before the workshop.

The outcome required was as open as I could get.

There were no boundaries and there were no specific rules.

Oracle IoT – Working with Bosch Devices

How to use the Bosch XDK with the Oracle IoT cloud service.

Introduction

As I continue to work with various IoT vendors to see how they could be used with the Oracle IoT cloud service, I came across one of these nice little Bosch XDK kits.

bosch-xdk

This is a demo kit to show off the many Bosch sensors available and give people an environment for prototyping. Here are some of the built-in sensors: XDK Sensors

The device has built-in wifi and Bluetooth LE.

My goal was to get this to periodically send sensor data into the IoT cloud service and make it easy for others to do the same.

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Oracle IoT – Working with Sigfox/Thinxtra Devices

How to use the Thinxtra devices and Sigfox network with the Oracle IoT cloud service.

Introduction

There are lots of activities happening today in the world of IoT (Internet of Things). The market is growing at a staggering pace. Oracle, of course, is providing services in this area, mainly to support our many great SaaS applications. Almost every application can benefit from data coming from devices on machines, automobiles, medical devices, human wearables and such. However, there are several issues people face:

How to work with all the various devices.
How to manage the devices and information.
How to integrate these with other systems in the enterprise.
Deployment of devices, configuration, maintenance, versions, upgrades, Etc.

Oracle IoT Cloud service is designed to help with these issues, but it is often overwhelming to get a given device’s data initially into the IoT cloud. Case and point is with the wonderful devices from Thinxtra which uses the Sigfox network.

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Teaching How to Use Alexa to Take Off your Drone using NodeJS

Recently I was in Auckland, New Zealand running an Integration in Action workshop and I used Alexa to trigger some of my APIs, including some NodeJS APIs that I built to take off a drone. Some people found this interesting and asked me to write this blog to explain in detail how it works… So, here it is, I hope you find it useful.

There are multiple ways in which you can make Alexa to call your own APIs. Perhaps the most versatile way is by adding a new skill (see: blog 1 , 2). However I found an even easier way to do so, and in order to achieve the MVP approach I have been attempting to practice in my day-to-day life, I took this simpler option, which is simulating a Phillips Hue HA bridge. By doing so, Alexa detects a new Home Automation (HA) device in “her” network range and accepts voice commands to easily “turn it on” or “turn it off” which you can then leverage to call your own APIs.

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