What is Azure Sphere ?

Pre-requisite Knowledge

Before we start with the understanding of Azure Sphere, we should know-

1. Azure Cloud
2. Generic Term IoT (Internet of Things)

Introduction of Azure Sphere

Before diving into the definition of Azure Sphere, let me first address the issue of Security in the coming devices, especially IoT devices, as the future is going to be full of IoT devices.

As the devices are going to use the user data and it is important that it doesn’t gets to the hackers while travelling to a central Hub, so Microsoft came up with the Azure Sphere, so as to overcome this problem, by creating a platform and a compatible Chip, which is named as Azure Sphere.

Hence, Azure Sphere is a platform which runs a custom designed Linux Operating System, built specifically to ensure that all the IoT devices do their communication securely. The hardware is a secure MCU (Microcontroller Unit).

Also, there are various development kits available for the Azure Sphere Platform. The development Machines are required to have some basic requirements:

• You’ll require a Azure Sphere Development Kit
• OS
  • PC with Windows 10 Anniversary Update or later or
  • Linux- Ubuntu-18.04 LTS
• 1 available USB Port

 There are then some procedure which include the following:

• Make sure your Windows PC/ Linux PC is up for the development
• Registering the device by an Azure Sphere Tenant, by using a unique ID of the device
• Then comes the configuration part, in this the device is configured for networking updating the Device OS. It’s just so that the device can receive the cloud updates.
• Finally comes the setting up of the Notifications for the device. So that the device can receive the notifications right from the Azure Sphere.

Quick starts:

1. Build a High- Level Application
2. Build the Real-Time-Capable Application
3. Deploy that application on the cloud

For the connectivity, there are 2 hardware- based supports available:

• Via Wi-Fi
• Via Ethernet

According to Microsoft the pricing for Azure Sphere is:

Conclusion - In this article, we have learned about:

1. 1. What is Azure Sphere
   2. Basics of Azure Sphere

Thank you so much for reading this article, GLHF for your journey into Azure Sphere.