Preface

Blockchain and the Internet of Things (IoT) have proved to be the most in-demand technologies right now, and are just at the beginning of their adoption curve. The consolidation of blockchain and the IoT is on the priority list of several big companies and a few have already started using its implementations, solutions, and initiatives in several projects.

This book will help you develop a blockchain and IoT solution using best practices. 

Who this book is for

This book is for anyone who is responsible for the security mechanisms of an IoT infrastructure, and IT professionals who wish to develop solutions using blockchain and IoT on the IBM Cloud platform. A basic understanding of IoT is required. 

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Understanding IoT and Developing Devices on the IBM Watson IoT Platform, helps you understand how IoT can be a game changer, what industries can do with this technology, how to get started in the IoT world, and what features the IBM IoT Platform provides and how you can leverage those features when creating an IoT solution.

Chapter 2, Creating Your First IoT Solution, helps you create your first end-to-end IoT solution using the platform and a Raspberry Pi to exercise your skills. You will create an automated garden-watering system that uses the platform to keep plants adequately watered.

Chapter 3, Explaining Blockchain Technology and Working with Hyperledger, introduces you to blockchain and helps you to understand how it works with a ledger to record the history of transactions that provide a permissioned network with known identities.

Chapter 4, Creating Your Own Blockchain Network, helps you create your own blockchain network using Hyperledger Composer, and explores how to create an asset, transaction functions, access control, and query definition.

 

Chapter 5, Addressing Food Safety - Building around the Blockchain, helps you design and implement a solution to address a logistics problem. You will gain an understanding of how an IoT and blockchain solution can ensure that a food chain that starts at a farm and ends on a person's plate can be securely tracked throughout its journey using those technologies, and in order to gain the compliance from many countries that will apply to this practice in a few years.

Chapter 6, Designing the Solution Architecture, helps you design the solution architecture from the food safety transportation business problem and define the requirements for a technical solution using blockchain to support the distributed ledger network and IoT devices, and the platform, to support the tracking process.

Chapter 7, Creating Your Blockchain and IoT Solution, shows you how to create a blockchain and IoT-integrated solution to address food safety transportation problems. You will gain hands-on experience using blockchain and IoT platforms by coding and testing the components designed in the previous chapter.

Chapter 8, The IoT, Blockchain, and Industry 4.0, helps you understand what the industry trends are and what new business models can be created or derived from IoT and blockchain solutions, as well as the market and technical trends regarding these technologies.

Chapter 9, Best Practices for Developing Blockchain and IoT Solutions, helps you understand previous project experiences and scenarios, and looks at the best practices and lessons learned for designing and developing blockchain and IoT solutions.

To get the most out of this book

We expect that you have familiarity with a programming language and some experience developing any solution for any embedded platform available (such as Raspberry Pi, Arduino, ESP8266, or Intel Edison). We will mostly be using Node.js and the Hyperledger Composer modeling language. Beginner-level JavaScript skills are welcome.

Download the example code files

You can download the example code files for this book from your account at www.packt.com. If you purchased this book elsewhere, you can visit www.packt.com/support and register to have the files emailed directly to you.

 

You can download the code files by following these steps:

1. Log in or register at www.packt.com.
2. Select the SUPPORT tab.
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The code bundle for the book is also hosted on GitHub at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Hands-On-IoT-Solutions-with-Blockchain. In case there's an update to the code, it will be updated on the existing GitHub repository.

We also have other code bundles from our rich catalog of books and videos available at https://github.com/PacktPublishing/. Check them out!

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/9781789132243_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "Next, open the IDE of your preference, create a new Node.js project, and install the ibmiotf dependency package."

A block of code is set as follows:

{
  "org": "<your iot org id>",
  "id": "<any application name>",
  "auth-key": "<application authentication key>",
  "auth-token": "<application authentication token>"
}

When we wish to draw your attention to a particular part of a code block, the relevant lines or items are set in bold:

"successRedirect": “<redirection URL. will be overwritten by the property 'json: true'>”,
"failureRedirect": "/?success=false",
"session": true,

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

$ npm start
> sample-device@1.0.0 start /sample-device

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "From the IoT Platform service created in the setup step, select Devices in the menu and then select Add Device."

Note

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Note

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Get in touch

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