Remote Monitoring Simplified — Azure IoT Central QuickStart

I’m setting up a home server in my storeroom, where my home broadband fibre terminates. The room is not air-conditioned. My 2U server generates heat, but it is still an acceptable range (30℃ — 35℃). However, for precaution purposes, I decided to monitor the room temperature, and alert me when the temperature reaches the threshold.

Sounds like a simple weekend project. There are many tutorials online on how to measure temperature with raspberry pi, create a dashboard, create a monitoring system, etc. From a hardware standpoint, all I need is a room temperature sensor, say DHT11, and a Raspberry Pi.

Raspberry Pi Zero with DHT11

At the code level, it will need to perform the following tasks:

1. Read values from the sensor
2. Check if the value crosses my pre-defined threshold, and send an alert
3. Store the readings in some sort of database for a time-series view
4. Webpage to view the reading

Conceptually it’s easy, but it’s a lot of work. Similar concept applies to industrial use cases, especially on remote monitoring. So, I asked myself, is there a simpler way to make this happen with the least work?

Initial Plan — Azure IoT Hub