The complete solution code is available in the ch2 folder, available at the https://github.com/PacktPublishing/Hands-On-IoT-Solutions-with-Blockchain.git repository.

Make sure that you have also installed Cloud Foundry CLI and Bluemix CLI; the installation process for these command-line interfaces is described at https://console.bluemix.net/docs/cli/index.html#overview.

Watering systems are common first projects for using IoT in the DIY community. We too will use it as an example project to get started on the IBM Watson IoT Platform. 

Good solutions are based on problems that really matter to people. So let's start our solution with an introduction to the actual problem:

John lives alone in an apartment in the city. He is a businessman who has to travel for work for 3-4 days in a week. When not travelling or working, John likes to take care of his plants. However, since he is not home for half the week, John is struggling to keep his garden healthy and beautiful.

John has faced several challenging...

Next, we will create a device application (firmware) that reads the sensor data and sends it to the backing application. In the previous chapter, we used Node.js to publish events from a device simulator, and now we're going to use this method to leverage the previous chapter's code. Remember that the objective of this solution is to water a plant whenever the temperature is high or the soil moisture is too low.

The next section shows the code needed in order to create the firmware that reads all the sensor data and publishes events to the IBM Watson IoT Platform.

The sensor probe used in this project is a resistive sensor, which measures the current that is passed...

With the device firmware setup completed, it's now time to focus on developing the application that will process the device events and send commands so that John's plant will get watered when he's not home.

The code for the application will run on the IBM Cloud Platform (Bluemix). Since this is just an example application, we're going to use environment variables to store parameters (temperature and soil moisture thresholds).

1. To create an application in IBM Cloud, access https://console.bluemix.net, select the Create Resource option, and select Cloud Foundry Apps in the left menu, followed...

In this chapter, we developed a solution running on a real device that supports Node.js. We also used the low-level mraa library, which interacts with the device GPIO (General Purpose IO), reads analog sensors (temperature and soil moisture sensors) and uses digital pins to switch a relay on and off. This looks very simple but most devices have sensors and actuators, which may change the way in which they are used. However, they essentially follow the same concept.

We created a dashboard in the IBM Watson IoT Platform that is helpful for looking at what real-time data devices are publishing. We also created an application in the IBM Cloud Platform (Bluemix) and attached backing services (the IBM Watson IoT Platform organization) to the application in order to leverage configuration data to connect to the service and deploy the application using the Bluemix command...

Most of the resources needed to complete solutions using the IBM Watson IoT Platform can be found in the official documentation at the following link: https://console.bluemix.net/docs/services/IoT/index.html#gettingstartedtemplate. There are also many recipes published by the community that uses IBM Watson IoT, and these are available at the developerWorks Recipes website here: https://developer.ibm.com/recipes/tutorials/category/internet-of-things-iot/.

It's also very helpful to understand how to upload a project to a GitHub repository and how to create a delivery pipeline to automatically build, test, and deploy an application whenever a new change is pushed to the repository. Doing this is not within the scope of this book, but it's still a really good practice to use.

Further information on Grove system platforms, modules, bundles, and component specifications...