Book Image

Practical Python Programming for IoT

By : Gary Smart
Book Image

Practical Python Programming for IoT

By: Gary Smart

Overview of this book

The age of connected devices is here, be it fitness bands or smart homes. It's now more important than ever to understand how hardware components interact with the internet to collect and analyze user data. The Internet of Things (IoT), combined with the popular open source language Python, can be used to build powerful and intelligent IoT systems with intuitive interfaces. This book consists of three parts, with the first focusing on the "Internet" component of IoT. You'll get to grips with end-to-end IoT app development to control an LED over the internet, before learning how to build RESTful APIs, WebSocket APIs, and MQTT services in Python. The second part delves into the fundamentals behind electronics and GPIO interfacing. As you progress to the last part, you'll focus on the "Things" aspect of IoT, where you will learn how to connect and control a range of electronic sensors and actuators using Python. You'll also explore a variety of topics, such as motor control, ultrasonic sensors, and temperature measurement. Finally, you'll get up to speed with advanced IoT programming techniques in Python, integrate with IoT visualization and automation platforms, and build a comprehensive IoT project. By the end of this book, you'll be well-versed with IoT development and have the knowledge you need to build sophisticated IoT systems using Python.
Table of Contents (20 chapters)
1
Section 1: Programming with Python and the Raspberry Pi
6
Section 2: Practical Electronics for Interacting with the Physical World
9
Section 3: IoT Playground - Practical Examples to Interact with the Physical World

Measuring temperature and humidity

The measurement of temperature and related environmental properties is a common task, and there are many different types of sensors available for measuring these properties, including thermistors (a temperature-dependent resistor), sophisticated breakout modules that connect via SPI and I2C, and sensor varieties such as the DHT11 or DHT22 sensors, which we will be using for our example.

All sensors have their relative strengths and weaknesses when it comes to accuracy, response times (how fast we can rapidly get data from them), and cost.

DHT sensors, as illustrated in Figure 9.1, are inexpensive, durable, and easy to use:

Figure 9.1 – DHT11 and DHT22 temperature and humidity sensors

The DHT11 is a very common low-cost sensor. The DHT22 is its higher-accuracy cousin. Both are pin-compatible and will be suitable for our example. The pinouts of these sensors as illustrated in the preceding figure are as follows:

  • Vcc: 3- to 5-volt power source...