New Integration with Microsoft

Hi everybody,

You may have seen our newsletter announcement that we’ve got a new collaboration with Microsoft! We’re really excited about having such an established company working with us, though we’re not totally surprised because we’ve seen the effort they’re putting into encouraging the start-up, hardware, and maker communities. This collaboration means that you’ve got an easy means of using your data in Azure, which has some really cool features that we’re excited to dig into more. Keep in mind this integration doesn’t mean you have to do anything with your data, but it does mean the possibilities for the data you collect (like temperature and humidity as you see here) become a lot more exciting.

Here’s our full newsletter announcement:

We’ve created an easy integration between our platform and Azure, Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, that will allow you to send your data from one platform to the other securely. This means you’ll have access to both the connectivity tools (Particle) and business intelligence tools (Azure) that make IoT really interesting.

Securely streaming data from your Particle devices into Azure Event Hubs gives you access to tools like Azure Streaming Analytics, Azure Machine Learning and a host of other services that allow you to store, use, and learn from your data. If you’re new to Azure you can sign up for a free trial here​.

To celebrate this collaboration the Microsoft team has put together a tutorial that uses a Photon and SparkFun Photon Weather Shield to build an Internet Photon Weather Station in Azure. The tutorial walks through setting up Particle tools with Windows, configuring Azure and creating a webhook to connect the two. As great as this first project is, there are more integrations to come that will make it even easier to use Azure and Particle together.

We hope this integration helps you make your connected projects even more awesome. Let us know what you think!

15 Likes

Having worked at Microsoft for several years, in a team that worked closely with the Azure team, I love this news!!

Particle, say hello to Big Data!

6 Likes

but what about Amazon aws?

Getting closer to my prediction a year ago :slight_smile:

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Nice! I had already Azure running to collect data from the Core’s webhooks. Now let’s do this better!

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Does anyone know if the Azure tutorial will work on a Mac? The tutorial mentions Microsoft Build tools, but i’m not sure when or where this was actually used or does it supply some plugin/magic to the Particle CLI?

It looks like it should. Microsuck build tools is just for installing particle-cli.

:spark: + Microsoft Azure = http://ctdparticle.azurewebsites.net/ :smiley:
( AM3201 Temp/Humid sensor), click left on “photon2” to only see the sensor values

I’m not seeing any data; did you take it down?

Steph

Can you explain exactly what is happening with the collaboration with Microsoft? Azure IoT Suite was launched on 29 September 15 and at that point Particle was not MS Azure certified for IOT. I have seen other posts in the community looking for documentation and support on how to integrate with Azure Event Hub more than the Hackster post. Is there something that is on the horizon? Thanks

Hi @armor,

That’s a good question! We’re continuing to talk with Microsoft on this integration, and part of that is investigating their IOT Suite. I believe the secure data ingestion points for IOT Hub vs. Event Hubs offer essentially the same level of security. You can easily and securely forward your data to Event Hubs now if you like with a webhook!

For example, here’s a webhook I setup that publishes data from a chicken coop into event hubs on azure:

{
    "eventName": "farm/coop/temp",
    "url": "https://katespetes.servicebus.windows.net/coop/messages",
    "requestType": "POST",
	"json": {
		"temp": "{{SPARK_EVENT_VALUE}}",
		"published_at": "{{SPARK_PUBLISHED_AT}}",
		"coreid": "{{SPARK_CORE_ID}}"
	},
    "azure_sas_token": {
        "key_name": "YOUR_KEY_NAME",
        "key": "YOUR_PASSWORD"
    },
    "nodefaults": true,
    "mydevices": true
}

I use a stream job on azure to insert those events into a managed SQL database! If you want, I have all the firmware and notes and build pictures up on the project page here: https://github.com/dmiddlecamp/petesfarm – I still need to do some more documenting, but hopefully that helps get you started! :slight_smile:

Thanks,
David

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Do you guys know if it is always needed to “Push” the events to Event Hub (e.g. with a webhook as showed above), or can Event Hub “listen” to an event stream from the Particle cloud using a user access token?

Dave

Thanks for this reply. Azure IOT Suite Hub and Event Hubs are the same thing if I understand Microsoft’s documentation/training. I am trying to decide on the architecture for the back end of a web IOT management console and at the moment the AWS IOT service looks to be slightly more interesting than Azure IOT suite. Using Azure IOT/Event Hubs would be a definite approach if Particle was a certified solution. I was wondering if such certification was being discussed and if so how far away it might be?

Thanks

1 Like

Hi @armor,

Interesting! I would think certainly given enough interest that could be something we look into. A simple webhook should be all that’s needed to securely send your data into either service, happy to help if we can! :slight_smile:

We also have a great organizational dashboard and fleet management system that’s constantly evolving at https://dashboard.particle.io

Thanks,
David