How it started

A bit of history… #

This online tutorial on Arduino, Sensors, IoT and LoRa technologies has been developed by University of Pau, France, in the context of the WAZIUP and WAZIHUB projects funded by the European Union in the H2020 research program. The main objective of this online tutorial was to provide comprehensive and guided training materials to be used in training sessions, hackathons, bootcamps, entrepreneur’s days,… that were organized by WAZIUP/WAZIHUB across Africa. The main initial contributors were Dr. Mamour Diop, Dr. Muhammad Ehsan and Pr. Congduc Pham. Now, it is still used as an online course for introducing IoT technologies and as a teaching platform for hands-on Arduino, microcontroller and sensor programming. Our main current research focus is on LoRa networks and IoT but this tutorial first start with basic of Arduino and sensor programming to understand sensing systems that are the foundation of so-called Internet-of-Things (IoT) concepts. Then in a second step, we will introduce some IoT protocols and technologies with a focus on LoRa radio technologies to show how to build low-cost, long-range and energy-efficient IoT devices.

EU H2020 WAZIUP & WAZIHUB #

WAZIUP (2016-2019) was a technology-driven EU-Africa project developing a fully open source IoT end-to-end (sensors, networking and software) platform, specialized to meet African needs/applications in terms of cost, energy, internet connectivity and simplicity. Congduc Pham was the scientific leader of the “Open IoT sensing and communication platform” workpackage which tasks are to develop an open, low-cost and long-range LoRa IoT framework. EU H2020 WAZIUP’s technological achievements can be found on the LowCostLoRaGw github repository that proposes a complete low-cost LoRa IoT framework from energy-efficient end-devices to open & versatile IoT gateway. Many additional informations can also be obtained from Pr. Congduc Pham’s tutorial/talks web page.

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Then, WAZIHUB (in Swahili for Open-Hub) (2018-2021) was an innovation project for Africa aiming to create an open hub of IoT and Big data cutting-edge and African grade solutions, co-designed by African people. The vision of WAZIHUB was to exploit IoT potential and share IoT technologies best-practices through the involvement of innovation communities and stakeholder (e.g. young entrepreneur (including woman), startup, developer, innovation hub) from local district, regional, national and African-wide. The project aimed at enabling the creation of Open Hubs throughout Africa where IoT technology solutions can then be adapted to match local service needs. The project goal was then to iterate and extract value from spining-off value-added IoT innovative services (e.g. monitoring, controlling, data analytic) based on the technologies developed in WAZIUP. It is in the context of WAZIHUB that IoT technologies developed in the WAZIUP project were integrated into this online tutorial platform and an IoT course curriculum proposed.

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WAZIUP e.V. #

With all the results achieved from EU H2020 WAZIUP & WAZIHUB, WAZIUP e.V. non-profit organization has been founded in 2018 to promote the development and the deployment of low-cost and open-source disruptive IoT/AI technologies in a more sustainable manner. WAZIUP e.V. operates mainly in Africa but also apply its expertise in many international projects worldwide. WAZIUP e.V. is directed by Dr. Abdur Rahim who was the coordinator of both EU H2020 WAZIUP & WAZIHUB. Pr. Congduc Pham is acting as Scientific Manager with Dr. Corentin Dupont as Scientific Director. WAZIUP e.V. is always committed to open-source development and its numerous contributions are published on the WAZIUP e.V.’s GitHub.

The low-cost and long-range LoRa IoT framework published on the LowCostLoRaGw github repository is still maintained and is the development line of choice for those who wants to build a very versatile and open IoT sensor-gateway framework thanks to its very flexible software architecture. WAZIUP e.V. however develops a more integrated gateway framework called WaziGate where the user interface is more elaborated and provide the possibility to develop a fully edge-enabled IoT gateway to embed customized application for various IoT/AI application verticals. The PRIMA INTEL-IRRIS project for smarter irrigation solutions targeting smallholders is using the WaziGate framework as the core component to propose a fully autonomous starter-kit to be deployed in piloting farms. On the end-device side, software building blocks are largely based on the LowCostLoRaGw framework.

Boosting innovation in Africa #

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On June 19th, 2020, the low-cost, low-power and long-distance cattle collar developed in the EU H2020 WAZIUP project has been identified by the European Commission’s Innovation Radar. From an original idea of Pr. Congduc Pham, the low-cost, low-power and long-distance cattle collar has further been jointly developed and tested with a team of researchers (Dr. Ousmane Dieng, Dr. Mamour Diop and Dr. Babacar Diop) from University of Gaston Berger (Saint-Louis, Senegal) led by Pr. Ousmane Thiaré. Large-scale testing facility has been provided by the CIMEL experimental farm in Saint-Louis, Senegal. The Arduino example of the GPS Cattle Collar is Arduino_LoRa_Simple_GPS. The dedicated tutorial describing the low-cost, low-power and long-distance cattle collar is [Low-cost-LoRa-Collar.pdf](( https://github.com/CongducPham/tutorials/blob/master/Low-cost-LoRa-Collar.pdf)

On April 12th, 2022, EU H2020 WAZIUP & WAZIHUB were recognized to be two EU-Africa innovation projects that have succeeded in rolling out advanced digital technologies to support entrepreneurship in sub-Saharan Africa.

The journey into boosting innovation in Africain Africa continues with the EU H2020 HUBiquitous project that has the ambition to develop Innovation Enablers to unlock deployment of IoT and AI technologies in Africa. Pr. Congduc Pham, as Scientific Manager of WAZIUP e.V., is leading the development of the SolutionLab Innovation Enabler to provide the capacity to learn, develop, test, experiment, pilot and innovate in disruptive IoT, AI and BigData technologies for the technical communities in Africa.

Let’s get started with sensors, microcontrollers and going towards IoT! #

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A device that detects the changes in electrical or physical or other quantities and thereby produces an output as an acknowledgement of change in the quantity is called as a Sensor. Generally, this sensor output will be in the form of electrical or optical signal.

The world is full of sensors: from passive infrared sensors in motion detectors, to carbon monoxide detectors in air conditioning systems, and even tiny accelerometers, GPS modules, and cameras inside your smartphone and tablet—sensors are everywhere! The variety of sensor applications is remarkable. Thanks to the proliferation of mobile devices, sensors are now remarkably affordable, meaning you can combine inexpensive sensors and microcontroller boards to make your own devices.

In this tutorial, we will learn how to process sensor data with Arduino popular microcontroller development boards for electronics enthusiasts. With the ability to control components such as buzzers, LED’s, servos, motors, LCD’s,… through analog and digital pins, Arduino boards have become the go-to selection for users that are looking to start into electronics, firmware coding, or automation. For more details visit the Arduino web site.

For users who want to go further and understand in more details sensor technologies, they can have a look at this page on Sensors and Transducers from www.electronics-tutorials.ws. Then, they can also look at this very interesting Adafruit tutorial on sensor calibration.

Objects with physical sensors that are able to communicate are at the foundation of IoT systems. There are many available resources on IoT and a search for “IoT video” on search engines will provide a lot of great links. Here are 5 links on nice videos you can start with.

There is also the great initiative from iot-open.eu with the “Introduction to the IoT Coursebook” that can be downloaded from this link. A lot of resources can also be found on the IoT European Research Cluster (IERC) web site, especially in the document section.

Regarding do-it-yourself resources for tech-enthusiasts and hobbyists, there are many available web sites that will provide complementary step-by-step tutorials on a large variety of IoT-related projects:

Enjoy!

2018 - Muhammad Ehsan, Mamour Diop & Congduc Pham