Rashid Khan is a programmer living in Bangalore. He is one of the founders of Yellow Messenger, a company that specializes in building bots for commerce. Prior to founding Yellow Messenger, he worked at EdgeVerve Systems, where he built backend systems to support IoT devices. He is an open source enthusiast and loves to experiment with new technologies. He is involved with a number of open source organizations, such as GNOME, Mono, Tomboy Notes, and Banshee and has built a Django (Python) library for Apache Spark called Django-LibSpark.
His interests lie in the field of Artificial Intelligence and interfacing software with real-world objects. Apart from programming, he loves to cycle and play tennis.
I am really thankful to my mother and father for providing the motivation and guidance to help me push myself constantly. My co-founders at Yellow Messenger, Anik, Raghu, and Kishore, provided constant support to experiment with new ideas for this book, and I would like to extend my gratitude for that. I would like to thank Rajeshwari Ganesan, my manager at EdgeVerve Systems, for giving me the opportunity to author this book. I would like to extend my gratitude to Ajith and Kajari, my coauthors, without whom this book would not be possible. This book would be incomplete without the guidance and mentorship of my friends and co-workers at EdgeVerve. I am extremely thankful to Chetan, who helped a lot with the sensors and data, and Nelly (Jeonghyun Kang), who helped with the firmware and testing out the initial projects.
Kajari Ghoshdastidar got her PhD in wireless sensor networks in 2009 and has been active in IoT-related hobby project work since then. She has worked in the software industry for the last 6 years as a technology architect, software developer, and a computer scientist. She is a technology geek, takes part in hackathons, and is always exploring new technologies and electronic gadgets.
She is currently part of the systems engineering team at EdgeVerve, working as a computer scientist.
First of all, I would like to thank Rajeshwari Ganesan, my mentor and manager at Edgeverve, for inspiring me to pen this book and closely guiding me all the way, and Rashid and Ajith for being the most awesome coauthors I could wish for. This book wouldn’t be complete without the support of my colleagues at Edgeverve, Chetan Kumar Velumurugan, who helped us a lot with his deep knowledge of sensors and accessories, and Nelly (Jeonghyun Kang), who helped with setting up and testing out the initial projects.
Ajith Vasudevan is an electronics, computer, and IoT enthusiast who likes to apply his knowledge in these fields to make modern living easy for himself and others around him. He has a bachelor's of technology degree in electrical and electronics engineering. He was interested in automation and IoT even before the term IoT became commonplace. He designed and built an automatic overhead-tank motor operator using $1 worth of electronic parts back in 1995, which is operating at his parent’s home to this day. He has automated and made it simple and efficient to operate many household appliances, for example, an automatic geyser switch that turns itself off after 10 minutes, saving electricity. It can be set to switch on at any specified time or can be controlled from anywhere. Today, even his friends and neighbors use this system.
Ajith has worked in the heavy electrical industry before joining his current employer, Infosys Technologies Limited, in the year 2000. He is presently a senior computer scientist at EdgeVerve Systems, a subsidiary of Infosys. At work, he enjoys programming and has done so for over a decade and a half.
I would like to thank Rajeshwari Ganesan for introducing me to the coauthors and Packt Publishing and for giving me the opportunity to coauthor this book. It has been an enjoyable and great learning experience for me.