This 4-part series is a continuation of IoT for Beginners run throughout September based off the second project in the 24-lesson series – digital agriculture.

The term 'Internet of Things' was coined by Kevin Ashton in 1999 to refer to connecting the Internet to the physical world via sensors. Since then, the term has been used to describe any device that interacts with the physical world around it either by gathering data from sensors, or providing real-world interactions via actuators (devices that do something like turn on a switch or light an LED), generally connected to other devices or the Internet.

At Microsoft we have built IoT For Beginners, a free, open source, 24-lesson curriculum to teach you all about the Internet of Things. In this series we work through the second project in the curriculum all about digital agriculture, building on the lessons from the previous series. You can catch the previous series at https://aka.ms/iot-for-beginners-videos.

Episode 1 – detect soil moisture

This lesson convers monitoring soil moisture using a soil moisture sensor, and in doing so dives more into how IoT devices communicate with sensors. We will also look at sensor calibration and see how you can convert from sensor data into real-world data values when the sensors are not pre-calibrated. This lesson will set you up for the next lesson, where the soil moisture levels will be used to control an automated watering system.

Speakers:
Jim Bennett, Regional Cloud Advocate, Microsoft
Jim is a Regional Cloud Advocate focusing on building out and skilling communities in the Pacific Northwest, with a focus on the Microsoft Reactor in Redmond, Washington. He’s British, so sounds way smarter than he actually is, and is happy he moved to Redmond in time to be locked down at home and not see the office he came to work in, or the places he wanted to visit. In the past he’s lived in 4 continents working as a developer in the mobile, desktop, and scientific space. He's spoken at conferences and events all around the globe, organized meetup groups and communities, and written a book on mobile development.