Building IoT Solutions with Rasberry Pi

The advent of IoT technology has enabled organizations to monitor the production and delivery of goods. The monitoring of goods requires an established relation between data networks and sensors, established through IoT devices. IoT devices require a stable platform to deploy any IoT application. One of the emerging platforms to deploy an IoT application is Rasberry Pi. It is an Open Source, cost-effective hardware with huge community support and tons of already ported projects. 

Raspberry Pi was established by the Raspberry Pi Foundation in the UK to teach computing languages in schools. It’s business potential and versatility has emerged as a small budget-friendly computer to serve various IoT projects, limited to web applications and Linux based programs. 

Operating Systems(OS) Raspberry Pi supports 

• - Ubuntu MATE
• - Windows 10 IoT core
• - Raspbian 

Popular Raspberry Pi IoT Projects 

1. Pi In The Sky Projects: A simple and reliable GPS radio tracker board for the Pi. The GPS receiver and RF radio transmitting module are capable of tracking high altitude balloon flights, landing spots of rockets, and monitoring temperature. The project enables admins to record and track the rocket’s trajectory. 

2. DH11 Humidity Sensor on the Raspberry Pi: A temperature and humidity sensor module to provide digital temperature and humidity readings. DH11 humidity sensors are popular for use in soil monitors, remote weather stations, and home automation systems.  The hardware can effectively record information, sense extremities easily.

3. Digital to Analog Convertors: Soft Sync, a Raspberry Pi project combines switches, sensors, and digital-to-analog converters. Some IoT applications need digital to analog converter or vice-versa. Some examples include - Ceiling fans managed through a laptop or a mobile phone use digital to analog converter for IoT setup.

4. Surveillance Camera: Previously, Surveillance cameras were difficult to afford because of their high production cost. Raspberry PI has made these cameras affordable for higher security. Pi’s microcomputer is used for building expensive surveillance cameras in as low as $120.

5. Pi as a Web Server: To learn how centralized hub of sensors and devices works, Raspberry Pi web server would be a good IoT project. This Raspberry Pi board can work as a central controlling unit to manage small scale controllers like Arduino. To run this project, a Raspberry Pi board with a Linux OS and a loaded Apache web server is all what is needed. 

6. Makey Makey IoT: The Makey Makey IoT can convert any physical objects into touchpads to operate machines such as computers. IoT projects can be built by using alligator clips, USB cable and Makey Makey circuit board.

RASPBERRY PI LINUX SUPPORT WITH MDM CAPABILITY

Raspberry Pi is a viable option for businesses looking to run IoT projects. But, what if they get MDM capabilities too? Like the ability to manage and control the sensor devices and gateway applications?

42Gears offers support to remotely manage Linux platform based devices which means platforms like Raspberry Pi, running Linux flavors can be remotely managed.

The above figure shows, how an IoT ecosystem can be more manageable and productive with an MDM. Following are few of the benefits of the combination:

• Software patches for Pi applications, responsible for collecting sensor data and pushing to cloud, can be rolled remotely.
• Since MDM communication is two ways, sensors connected through Pi can be configured and calibrated remotely.
• Health of Pi and the sensor devices connected through it can be monitored remotely.
• Since Pi runs Linux flavors, MDM can push and execute generic Linux scripts, empowering admins with powerful toolset to manage vast IoT deployments.
• Communication of data exchange between Pi and cloud can be secured by forcing secure communication policies from MDM.

With growing numbers of smart mobile devices used in business processes, the demand for more controllability from these devices has increased. Also, sensors in objects required tools that can connect and control them efficiently, which led to the emergence of IoT.

IoT projects could do wonders for the businesses if implemented through a proper strategy. Raspberry Pi based IoT projects are very popular due their affordability and ease of implementation . Also, Managing Raspberry Pi's though an EMM solution will enhance the IoT projects to offer a complete IoT solution that can help enterprises reduce costs by improving operational efficiencies, and take enterprise mobility to the next level.

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