Electric imp and the Internet of Things

Internet of Things is the next big tsunami to hit the world. The numbers quoted are staggering. There are lots of players, big and small building up their stuff.

The Electric Imp is a platform which has all the necessary features:

• Hardware
• Software
• OS
• APIs
• Cloud Service

With these you get all the well known capabilities (Cloud Mantra 1:01):

• Intelligence
• Flexibility
• Scalability

Electric Imp has several models, this model (imp001) has 6 I/O and works with Wi-Fi(802.11 b/g/n) with a 32-bit ARM Cortex M3 Processor. Programmability is via Squirrel language, a light weight, object oriented language. The physical size is small, 24mm x 32mm x 2.1 mm.

You can make API calls to the device. Here is what API's can do for you:

"The Electric Imp API provides a set of classes and global objects with which imp code may access local hardware and remote cloud functionality. This API augments the Squirrel Standard Library which provides non-imp-specific functionality. For more general information about the Squirrel language, see Learning Squirrel."

Read more about Squirrel language here:
http://squirrel-lang.org/

The company is young with seasoned warriors who have left the likes of Apple and Google. Hey! that's a plus+.

Read some background information on this one year old company here:
http://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1261758

More on Electric imp here:
http://electricimp.com/product/

Here is stuff from a gallery of products using Electric Imp:

Well, these may make you think, do we really want to light up a lamp from the cloud or a lock that can be activated via Wi-Fi? But what is important is if it can do this, it can do lot more.
Imagination is the limit.

Most of the images are from Electric Imp site.

Disclosure: This is an independent post from Hodentek and not supported by any organization

SQL Server 2014 and NIC Teaming

SQL Server 2014 now takes advantage of NIC teaming feature provided by Windows Server 2012 R2 to improve enterprise-class scalability resulting in reduced infrastructure cost and predictable
performance, the magic words (mantras) you love to hear.

What is NIC Teaming?

NIC teaming is Load Balancing ns Failover(LBFO) a feature that allows multiple network adpaterss on a computer to be placed in a team (group) for the following express purposes:

• Bandwidth aggregation
• Prevent connectivity loss in a network failure event

NIC Teaming architecture
Teaming architectures are pretty much the same across vendors. Baiscally two or more physical networks adpaters(nic)are connected to a NIC Teaming solution to multiplex them to one or more virtual adapters called team network adapters(tnic) as shown.

Here is a teaming solution from VMWare.


 

Please review this link from VMWare from which the above image is taken.


http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx2_NIC_Teaming.pdf
NIC teaming in VMWare EXS Server 2 supports IEEE 802.3ad static link aggregation standard.

You want some more read my other blog:
http://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/2014/06/sql-server-2014-and-scalability.html

Your references:
Core reference:
http://ieee802.org/3/hssg/public/apr07/frazier_01_0407.pdf

Microsoft NIC Teaming:
 http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh831648.aspx
VMWare NIC Teaming: 
http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/support/landing_pages/Virtual-Support-Day-Best-Practices-Virtual-Networking-June-2012.pdf
CISCO NIC Teaming:
https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-3729

Microsoft Azure enters Gartner's Magic Quadrant

Last week Gartner released their Magic Quadrant on cloud vendors.

You know what?

Microsoft grabbed the Leader's position for Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure- that is IaaS
for you.

Well for Gartner IaaS is  not just moving round hardware and configuring  it, 
According to Gartner, "Cloud compute IaaS as a virtual data center of compute,
storage and network resources delivered as a service"
Well, MSFT is also a Leader in Application Platform as Service. This makes MSFT the only
cloud service vendor with such a recognition.

Go ahead and host on Azure without hesitation.


 

Universal Apps on Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1

This is a good video that you should review if you are either developing or working with Apps for the the new Windows 8.1 OS.

The video from Channel 9 touches upon many of the features of the Universal Apps and Kevin Gallo speaks from his experience using Surface Pro and Nokia 1020.

Universal apps have just one solution containing both Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1 projects sharing common code addressing hardware platforms with different foot prints, Windows
Phone, Surface and laptops.

The audio/video is  of good quality.  There are lots of related Q & A's.
The answers are quite focused such as,

-Supported languages JavaScript, C#, C++, C and VB.NET.
-Action Center
-Game development
-App migration
-Mix and match languages
-Leveraging legacy apps
-WinRT Broker
-DirectX with only C or C++ and no C#
and many more.

I hear in the video that you can create Universal apps using VB as well. However, Visual Studio does not seem to have a template to create one. Perhaps you may have to create one for yourself.

In the case of Universal Apps with Javascript you have the same .js file for both of Windows 8.1 apps and Windows Phone 8.1 apps. For other supported languages also a major portion of the code is shared.

 

There are some differences (version) in the WinJS script file sources for 'base' and 'ui' to address features special to the devices in their default.html pages.

Since the device foot prints are different; the package manifest are different requiring developers, for example, to tailor their graphics to suit the devices. Here there is a whole lot of icons to create which may be one of the time consuming tasks in development although some general recommendations are given.

It would have been nice if the develper supplied just one image (vector/SVG) and the program create required images from it without having have to create a number of images of different sizes and scale factors.
 

Azure Datacenters two in Asia & now one in South America (in GA)

Do not forget to get free books on Microsoft Windows Azure.

Azure Datacenter is now generally available in Brazil. A promotional pricing is offered right now. Geo replication to South US datacenter from Brazil dictates default storage option being Geographically Redundant Storage.

Brazil Datacenter debuts after two other data centers in Asia:
http://windowsitpro.com/azure/microsoft-opens-azure-datacenter-brazil-south-region

Japan GEO
 http://azure.microsoft.com/ja-jp/community/japan-datacenter-geo/

China operated by 21Vianet
 http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2014/03/microsoft-launches-mainland-china-azure-cloud-data-center

 This is what you should do to get your free book. Note only the first three persons (from Brazil, Japan and China) to respond will get the book.
Follow this link for book details:
http://hodentekmsss.blogspot.com/2014/06/three-more-microsoft-azure-datacenters.html