Erm, no…but it will be soon - ps check yr email
@ Justin how is that website coming along 
We might have to talk again.
@ Duke Nukem - much more important stuff going on :whistle:
Isn’t there always much more important stuff going on then building a website??? I mean really getting bamboo shoots planted under my fingernails is much more important then building a website.
UPDATE!!!
Hi everyone
I know it’s been quite a while, but things have progressed well since our last post.
At the conclusion of our field trial, we decided to enter the idea into the Microsoft Imagine Cup. We figured we’d have a decent chance having a solution to a world problem and using pretty much all Microsoft technologies (at the time) to run it all.
So after a proposal, some presentations and preliminary finals, we found ourselves at the NZ National Finals competing in the Innovation Category.
Medium story short, we were awarded with the Runner Up (2nd) place award! 
So a huge thanks are in order to the community here for all the help and support offered. Justin gets a special mention for the specialist help and advice too!!
Here’s a link the article… http://www.waikato.ac.nz/news-events/media/2014/04rat-trap-technology-a-winner-for-students.shtml
Just some quick technical details that may help others attempting similar projects. Or anything IoT related really!
We found it suuuuuper easy to connect Gadgeteer, .NET MF, Arduino and Raspberry Pi’s to Microsoft Azure. More specifically connecting these platforms to Azure Mobile Services. It was a huge load taken off our shoulders to have the API scaffolding already there; all we had to do is say what data we wanted to store!
If anyone wants some help with this don’t hesitate to shoot me a message. I may even write up a post specifically on how to integrate .NET MF with Azure Mobile Services if anyone would be interested?
Anyway, thanks for being a part of our journey. You’re all great!
Jourdan & Team Ohiti
PS: That is a GHI Spider kit in the attached images 
3 Likes
Thanks for the update.
I think there is lots of people out here interested in knowing exactly how you have been using Azure. Personally, the complexity and price of Azure has knocked me to open source technologies. So, let us know what you have done.
[quote=“njbuch”]I think there is lots of people out here interested in knowing exactly how you have been using Azure. Personally, the complexity and price of Azure has knocked me to open source technologies. So, let us know what you have done.
[/quote]
Sure thing! Best part is, you can actually build a cloud based IoT project for free on Azure. I’ll put something together
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Well done to you and the lads, I’m very happy to see netmf out in the wild.
Keep it up and another post on the plumbing would make for an excellent read.
Congratulations! Nice to see a project like this from our side of the world.
Looking forward to your writeup about posting to Azure.
Wow. I did not realize that. Are you referring to a limited time period trail project or is this a permanent free IoT project?
[quote=“KiwiSaner”]Wow. I did not realize that. Are you referring to a limited time period trail project or is this a permanent free IoT project?
[/quote]
A lot of people don’t. That’s probably why it doesn’t get used more. It should get more exposure with the IoT campaign Microsoft is running right now. It’s so easy to set up and use!
I’m going to put a little mashup blog post together. I’m thinking maybe a simple Gadgeteer → Azure → IFTTT (https://ifttt.com/) mashup! 
And then maybe the other way around too. We’ll see how the first one goes.
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Havent noticed any IoT campaign from MS, do you have a link? I have tried signing up to a mobile Azure portal with a price tag, after 1 month of free, at USD350/mth. Its ridicously impossible to navigate between millions of options, and they want to throw in so many services that you loose overview.
I think they need to iterate one more time over that stuff…
I am using a hosted python server with a 500MB mysql database costing USD5/mth. Brilliant REST apis to receive data, and cool customization options. I am in complete control.
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The general page is here
and the link to the Intelligent Systems Service preview is here
Lots of colors, lots of text, almost no real information.
I agree. I see those pages more as the managers introduction to IoT. You’ll find over the coming weeks/months that the engineers intro and deep dive into IoT will be covered by all the Microsoft Partners.
[quote=“njbunch”] Its ridicously impossible to navigate between millions of options, and they want to throw in so many services that you loose overview.
I think they need to iterate one more time over that stuff…[/quote]
Yeah the interface does have a million options! The new portal was announced at //build though, once it’s out of preview it should be much easier
HOWEVER, once you do finally get set up, both the SQL database and REST service that hosts all your data is free! I’m working on a blog post about it, should be finishing it off over the next few weekends. I’m thinking a 3-part series.
You won’t get a 3gb database that cheap on Azure (at today’s pricing). But they do give you the REST API chunk for free up to 500K API calls.
The biggest positives for me to use Azure are that you can share the same classes and code base between your gadgeteer app and web app in Azure, the fact that you can easily integrate your API with any other MS service sitting in the cloud and also how easily you can connect your gadgeteer solution to facebook/twitter/google/ms all in one go (I realise that this probably doesn’t mean much for the majority of projects, but it’s so handy!!!)
2 Likes
@ njbuch -
Could you please provide the link to the hosted python service/website you mentioned?
Thanks