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

Using an H-Bridge IC to control a motor

In Chapter 7, Turning Things On and Off, we learned how to use a transistor to turn a DC motor on and off, and we also saw how to control the motor's speed using PWM. One limitation of our single transistor circuit was that the motor only rotated in one direction. In this section, we will explore a way to let us spin our motor in both the forward and backward directions – using what is known as an H-Bridge circuit.

The H in H-Bridge comes from the perception that a basic H-Bridge circuit schematic (created from four individual transistors) make a letter H.

If you search around sites such as eBay for an H-Bridge module, you will identify many ready-made modules for the same purpose that we will cover in this section. What we will do is build a replica module on our breadboard. Once you have your breadboard replica working and understand how it works, you will be in a position to understand the construction of...