Hands-on Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) stands to be the next revolution in computing. Billions of data-spouting devices connected to the Internet are already fundamentally changing the way we live and work. This course teaches a deep understanding of IoT technologies from the ground up. Students will learn IoT device programming (Arduino and Raspberry Pi), sensing and actuating technologies, IoT protocol stacks (Zigbee, 5G, NFC, MQTT, etc), networking backhaul design and security enforcement, data science for IoT, and cloud-based IoT platforms such as AWS IoT. As an optional honors avtivity, students will be guided through laboratory assignments designed to give them practical real-world experience, where they will deploy a distributed wifi monitoring service, a cloud-based IoT service platform serving tens of thousands of heartbeat sensors, and more. Students will emerge from the class with a cutting-edge education on this rapidly emerging technology segment, and with the confidence to carry out tasks they will commonly encounter in industrial settings. Important: To complete the practical part of the whole series (honors) there will be practical experimentation using actual hardware, which you will need to acquire. (Cost may vary between 100 and 200 USD depending on your location). Most parts that are needed for the first course, will be re-used in the following courses.

This course builds on the first two courses in this series: IoT Devices and IoT Communications. Here you will begin to learn enterprise IoT. Enterprise networks, from first-hop access to backend IoT services are critical because they allow your IoT devices to reach the Internet and achieve their true intelligence. IoT places extreme demands on first-hop access - ultra-dense deployments challenge spectrum allocation, the need to provide strong segmentation yet let devices reach into IoT services such as gateways and databases. During this week you will begin to learn about these challenges, and the underlying protocols and technologies of wired networks that can help you to address them.

This course is the last course in our series of four courses and builds on the previous three courses: IoT Devices, IoT Communications, and IoT Networking. After we have built and programmed a small self-driving vehicle, we then set out to enhance its connectivity and add important security infrastructure. In this course we will now look closer into various remaining types of decentralized network topography. In the lab, we will additionally cover important cloud technologies based on machine-learning. In the first two weeks' lectures, we will cover important components of networks. Metaphorically speaking, when you learn how the human body works, you start by understanding the "organs", the stomach, the liver, and so on. Likewise, we can best understand networks by understanding the individual components that make them up and their function. In this lecture series we will study "devices" such as routers, switches, firewalls, load balancers, and many more. We will learn about how they individually operate, how they are configured, and how they work together to achieve various network-wide properties and goals.