Book Image

Hands-On Internet of Things with Blynk

By : Pradeeka Seneviratne
Book Image

Hands-On Internet of Things with Blynk

By: Pradeeka Seneviratne

Overview of this book

Blynk, known as the most user-friendly IoT platform, provides a way to build mobile applications in minutes. With the Blynk drag-n-drop mobile app builder, anyone can build amazing IoT applications with minimal resources and effort, on hardware ranging from prototyping platforms such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi 3 to industrial-grade ESP8266, Intel, Sierra Wireless, Particle, Texas Instruments, and a few others. This book uses Raspberry Pi as the main hardware platform and C/C++ to write sketches to build projects. The first part of this book shows how to set up a development environment with various hardware combinations and required software. Then you will build your first IoT application with Blynk using various hardware combinations and connectivity types such as Ethernet and Wi-Fi. Then you'll use and configure various widgets (control, display, notification, interface, time input, and some advanced widgets) with Blynk App Builder to build applications. Towards the end, you will learn how to connect with and use built-in sensors on Android and iOS mobile devices. Finally you will learn how to build a robot that can be controlled with a Blynk app through the Blynk cloud and personal server. By the end of this book, you will have hands-on experience building IoT applications using Blynk.
Table of Contents (10 chapters)

Setting Up a Development Environment

Blynk is known as the most user-friendly IoT platform consisting of an app builder that can be run on iOS and Android operating systems, and a set of libraries to build amazing IoT applications in minutes with your favorite hardware platform. It allows you to quickly build interfaces by simply dragging and dropping widgets to control and monitor your hardware projects from your iOS and Android device.

In this chapter, you will learn about:

  • Hardware platforms, connection types, architecture, ecosystem, and online resources
  • Installing Blynk app builder on Android
  • Creating a user account with the Blynk app builder to log in to Blynk Cloud
  • Creating a new project with Blynk
  • Preparing Raspberry Pi by adding SD card, Ethernet cable, Wi-Fi dongle, and power supply
  • Writing Raspbian Stretch Lite on Raspberry Pi by flashing image to SD card with Etcher
  • Configuring SSH on Raspberry Pi
  • Installing prerequisite packages such as git-core and WiringPi on Raspberry Pi
  • Using PuTTY to connect with Raspberry Pi with SSH protocol
  • Configuring wireless connection on Raspberry Pi for Raspbian Stretch Lite
  • Connecting Raspberry Pi with Blynk Cloud by running the sample C++ source file