IoT Dev + Test 2017 - Developer
Monday, April 24
Kick-Start Your Android Development (2-Day)
Tuesday, April 25
Building Cross-Platform Mobile Applications with C# and Xamarin
NewToday’s world of smartphones has narrowed into two primary camps—Android and IOS—and to be competitive, you must develop for both. If you don’t want to hire two completely different development teams, use Xamarin. It enables .NET development teams to leverage their current platform and abilities to build truly cross-platform apps with a single code base. Mike Benkovich explores how you can start using Xamarin to build code for Android and iOS devices using C# and a common framework. Mike presents an overview of Xamarin and how it is used for cross-platform development. See how to setup and...
Wednesday, April 26
IoT with Azure Streaming Data Services
NewFrom the gathering of data to its analysis and presentation, Microsoft Azure provides services to make architecting and delivering IoT functionality easy. Mike Benkovich illustrates the possibilities with MyDriving, a reference architecture application that shows the processing of data created by an OBD/II device through a smartphone proxy. He introduces the concepts of Data in Motion and IoT infrastructures and describes various Azure services and management tools. With this foundation established, Mike introduces you in a lab setting to core services including Event Hub, stream analytics...
Swift Programming: Advanced Topics
NewIf you are an experienced developer who is familiar with the basics of the Swift 3.0 programming language, this hands-on workshop is for you. James Dempsey will move beyond the basics to take a deeper dive into the Swift programming language, with plenty of opportunity for you to practice the syntax and code. Topics include error handling, pattern matching, protocol extensions, custom operators, generics, and advanced techniques in defining and using classes, structs, and enumerations. Throughout this hands-on workshop, you will use the Swift REPL and Playgrounds to explore Swift and try...
Unit Testing Android Apps: A Hands-On Workshop
PreviewWith a global market share of more than 86 percent, Android has taken over the mobile world. Since it’s relatively easy to begin developing Android apps with the free tools available, the Google Play Store has millions of Android applications. Many developers find their apps more frail with each update as adding a feature to one activity breaks something outside it. Unfortunately, it is usually the customer who finds these bugs and then punishes the app with bad reviews. However, Troy Miles says there is a solution—robust unit testing. In this hands-on workshop, Troy shows you how...
Create an IoT Device: A Hands-On Workshop
NewWith the cost of microcontrollers, sensors, and Wi-Fi modules steadily decreasing, IOT is finding its way into many common devices in our lives and households. But, how do you get started with IoT development? What’s the best device to use? For this information and more, join Lance Gleason to explore the world of IoT by turning conference badges into Wi-Fi-enabled devices using the NodeMCU (ESP8266) open-source firmware and development kit, a 4x4 NeoPixel array, small battery pack, sensor, and voltage chip. Attendees will start by learning some basic electronics as we assemble the units (...
Super Rad Brainstorming
Ever had a brainstorming session that failed to produce the quality results you hoped for? Think you already have good brainstorming sessions but know there’s room for improvement? Facilitating Super Rad Brainstorming sessions for eons now, Jaimee Newberry is an industry leader in improving brainstorming skills and surfacing incredible ideas. Work together as Jaimee facilitates a dialogue-based session that highlights tips and tricks for making your own brainstorming sessions more productive. Learn what supplies to bring, how to prepare for a session, and how to handle common sticking...
Creating Responsive Mobile Web Apps with Angular and Angular Material
Preview NewToday's web programming is no longer stuck on the desktop. Modern web apps live on mobile smartphones and tablets. In this hands-on session, Troy Miles shares how using Google’s Angular and Angular Material allows your single codebase to move easily among all these environments. Angular Material, the DOM implementation of Google's Material Design Specification, is similar to Twitter's Bootstrap framework in purpose but relies on Angular directives rather than CSS classes. A full UI toolkit, it adds widgets for everything from buttons to sidenavs. In addition to supplying widgets,...
Thursday, April 27
A Screenless Future Is Closer Than You Think
Somewhere near you is a device with a screen. You can’t live without that device. In fact, you are reading this right now on that—or another—device. Within a few years, the screens that we so depend on today will begin to disappear. After all, we are analog creatures, and we are meant to experience the world without the confining boundaries of two-dimensional screens. What is this “screenless future,” and what tech advancements are being made right now to make it real? Dona Sarkar is experiencing first-hand this new future in her role as principal product manager at HoloLens, working to...
IoT—Let’s Code Like It’s 1999!
Everyone is drawn to the cool new ways to connect devices to the Internet and make life easier—and a little more futuristic. But, do you know that IoT has been around since the past century? Theresa Lanowitz is one of the early advocates of what is now IoT and is thrilled that the pace of acceptance is accelerating—rapidly. This level of acceptance and understanding of IoT was not always the case. Theresa shares the early ideas, vision, and concepts of the Sun Jini project, the pre-cursor to IoT, and offers advice for developers and testers on how to succeed with IoT. Whether you are part...
UI Framework Prototyping with Playgrounds for iOS Apps
Frameworks are a powerful tool for sharing code between applications and extensions. Playgrounds are an awesome tool for quickly trying out code in Swift. Keeping a tight feedback loop with designers can be difficult. So, how can you combine the powerful and the awesome to help keep your feedback loop with design as tight as possible? Use UI Frameworks in Playgrounds! Learn how to build a UI-only framework, and then use it in a Playground. See how you can tempt your designers to the dark side of installing Xcode and tweaking values themselves. Ellen Shapiro discusses how she used this...
Rapid Prototyping with Arduino and Open Hardware
Thanks to the rise of Arduino, an open source electronics platform based on easy-to-use open source hardware and software, it is much cheaper and easier to prototype and build smart devices connected to the internet. Arduino comes with an integrated development environment (IDE), using the Processing, C, and C++ programming languages. Jim McKeeth shows you how easy it is to get started with simple projects and proof of concepts. Taking a proof of concept to the next stage involves communication among Arduino, the mobile device, and the cloud. This facilitates configuration, data gathering...
Real Time IoT and Mobile Data: Put It to Work for Your Users
Every app is producing huge amounts of data, recording everything from location changes and button taps to data usage and acceleration. But what do you do with this flood of data? How can you make historical data a powerful tool for your users? How do you store it, let alone process it? How do you scale so that it doesn't all come to a grinding halt when your app is featured on Google Play and iTunes? Siva Katir discusses some scenarios facing developers who want to use this data to customize and improve their apps. Explore real-world pitfalls and best practices discovered while building...
Threads, Queues, and More: Async Programming in iOS
PreviewTo keep your iOS app running butter-smooth at 60 frames per second, Apple recommends doing as many tasks as possible asynchronously or “off the main thread.” Joe Keeley introduces you to some basic concepts of asynchronous programming in iOS. He discusses what threads and queues are, how they are related, and the special significance of the main queue to iOS. Look at what options are available in the iOS SDK to work asynchronously, including NSOperationQueues and Grand Central Dispatch. Take an in depth look at how to implement some common use cases for those options in Swift. Joe pays...
Designing Software for the Present and the Future: What’s Your Why?
Better and more meaningful results always happen when your team has clarity of vision around why they're doing what they're doing. Jaimee Newberry says that the future is about getting technology out of the way of our everyday functions and actions while using it to enhance lives in every conceivable way. We must be thinking far beyond what’s next. The process is almost always about people, and most people need to ease into change. As software designers, we need to be thinking several futures down the road and breaking that vision into baby steps so people won’t freak out or think “too...
Tricks and Tips for Adding Localization Features to Your Mobile Apps
PreviewThe fact that 60 percent of all iPhone users worldwide are non-native English speakers is just one reason for supporting people from many countries and regions in your apps. Even if multi-language applications are not called for, localization features for single language apps will improve usability and acceptance from users across many cultures and geographic areas. Using an English-only iOS application from Nordstrom as an example, Shawn Larson shows you how with little effort you can add international support to your applications. He walks you through implementing code to take...
Harnessing Digital Services to Improve Driver Experience at BMW
The world is demanding more from cars. No longer merely a way to get around, modern vehicles have become authentic pieces of technological art—equipped with numerous sensors and capabilities that are gradually transforming the very meaning of the word ‘vehicle’. BMW wanted to get ahead of this changing landscape and continue to delight their customers whether inside or outside the car—but how? Jorge Coca faced this challenge when he joined the team in January 2016. He and his peers found the answer in BMW Connected, an application that seamlessly links customers’ cars with their digital...
Gradle for Android Developers
The new build mechanism replacing Ant for Android development is based on Gradle, the popular build tool from the Groovy ecosystem. Ken Kousen introduces you to Gradle for Android developers and shows how easy it is to integrate Gradle into Android projects. See the latest version of the Android Studio IDE to develop applications. Join Ken to discuss using the Android plugin for Gradle; adding dependencies and alternate repositories; creating custom tasks; implementing both unit and integration tests; using alternative build types, product flavors, and variants; and more. Leave with an...
Wireless IoT Network Communications: Now and into the Future
With a focus on public and private network communication options, Michael Finegan reviews cellular and long range RF solutions—LoRa, Sigfox, Ingenu, and NB IOT—and compare link budget, bandwidth, and power efficiency. In addition to the physical characteristics, Michael explores the positioning of various technologies in the marketplace and deployment types, employing aggregation methods that use gateways and concentrators which allow companies to process data locally. Discover at what point LPWA topology needs to transition from a campus-area network to a macro network. Learn about...
A Coded Mind: From Ideas and Assumptions to Applications
We tend to imagine code as a construct wholly separate from the subjectivity of the human mind. However, time and time again we prove that systems and applications are extensions of our thought process—for better and for worse. Our assumptions and our ideas are magnified when captured in code—for better and for worse. TJ Usiyan asserts that overlooking this idea has led to unfortunate expectations of the software that we write and poor results for those meant to use it. Join TJ as he describes tools you can employ to reveal overlooked audiences, avoid unforced errors in products and...
Friday, April 28
Enterprise IoT: Solving the Challenges of the Smart City
The Internet of Things is bringing unprecedented levels of instrumentation and insights, drawing from the vast advances brought about by the industrial, mobile, and internet revolutions. While people are already comfortable with connected fitness devices, thermostats, and home security, IoT for urban environments and the enterprise is still in its infant stage and evolving quickly. Gary Garcia maintains that the digitalization of enterprises and the cities where they reside will fundamentally change the way businesses interact with their employees and customers—and how governments interact...
Accurate Indoor Device Location with Beacons
Proximity location is a fundamental feature of many IoT applications. As long as a receiver has a clear unobstructed view of four satellites in the sky, GPS provides accuracy down to two meters. However, if the GPS receiver loses view of the sky, especially indoors, what can be done? Jim McKeeth says the solution is to employ Bluetooth LE advertisements of relative signal strength as a proximity beacon. Once there are three or more beacons in fixed locations, a smart device within range can triangulate at the centimeter scale for accurate locations—and works indoors. Jim explains the...
The IoT: Internet of Threats?
PreviewFrom connected elevators to smart cars, the Internet of Things (IoT) is all around us, even in ways we're not aware of. The devices make our lives easier, encourage us to exercise, and save time and resources--but at what cost? With current computer and mobile technology, the main threat is to our data and our accounts, with phishing and ransomware topping the charts; however, the IoT introduces risk to our personal safety and compromises our privacy in ways we can't even yet imagine. Join Chris to...
A Taste of ES6 JavaScript: The Language and the Tools
Curious about the features and benefits of JavaScript ES6, a,k.a ECMAScript 6 2015? Want to use it today? Rob Richardson says JavaScript has come of age, and it’s time for enterprise developers to embrace it. The latest version of ES6 adds lots of syntactical sugar to make code clearer. Rob covers new features such as constants, extended parameter handling, template literals, object matching, enhanced object properties, generators, and more. The good new is that you can use these tools in ES5 browsers today by leveraging a code bundler and transpiler. Rob takes a look at the new syntax...
Faster Native Application Development with Ionic2
Let's be honest … developing for mobile can be taxing on both you and your company. Hiring Android, iOS, and other developers to write the same code for multiple platforms is expensive and can be a development nightmare. Greg Avola walks you through mobile cross-platform development using an open source framework called Ionic2. Ionic2 supports building highly interactive native and progressive web apps using HTML/CSS/JS for code sharing and a native experience. You can leverage your website engineering skillsets to develop native apps, share code among many platforms, release features...
Ensuring the Happy Path: Automated Developer Testing for Mobile Apps
PreviewIs there anything worse than trying to fix that one small bug, declaring it fixed, and then realizing “the fix” caused another bug somewhere else in your app? And there it is, one more bug and you are at it again. The small voice in your head says if only you had automated tests. We know we should invest more in testing because it can save us headaches down the road. Josiah Mory says that although getting started can be an uphill climb, automated testing does not have to be all or nothing. Josiah introduces approaches for automating developer tests along with test-driven...
Securing your IoT Implementations
Fun with Enterprise iOS Apps
Can building an enterprise app be fun? Not “fun” in the sense of “if this is fun, we’re having it”—but actual, joyful, enthusiastic fun? Join Joe Keeley to explore how to find fun in the development lifecycle of iOS apps in enterprise environments, and (not coincidentally) how to deliver better enterprise apps with improved ROI. Start by looking at what factors are important in the selection of an iOS project, and how to optimize that selection process for apps that are quick to deliver and have high impact in the organization. Next look at the importance of design in the process and how...