Triggering Microsoft Flow using an Azure Function

For a recent Azure IoT workshop, we were looking for a nice ending of the Azure IoT pipeline. Because after introducing IoT Hubs, Stream Analytics, Event Hubs and Azure Functions, we wanted to show the real power of IoT.

Normally, we show a bunch of charts in PowerBI. You have seen it in my previous blogs, it’s so powerful. But this time, we wanted to do something else, something snappy.

Well, we came up with Microsoft Flow. At first, I was a bit sceptic. Will this help us to ‘sell’ Azure IoT?

Well, see for yourself… Here is an example on how to send, conditionally, an email to an email address you provide.

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Closing the Windows IoT Core feedback loop using Azure Functions

Windows IoT Core is my preferred solution for the proof of concepts I build. The IoT stack is both easy and powerful and it’s a good choice to build real world solutions on too.

Getting telemetry in the Cloud using Microsoft Azure IoT Hub is easy also. And in my previous blog, I showed that adding live charts for BI only takes a couple of minutes.

There is one other thing that is very typical to IoT Hub. And that is sending commands back to devices. I use Azure Functions for that purpose.

In this blog, I will show you how to make use of this new, cheap and handy feature in Azure.

Update: Azure Functions is still in preview. I fixed some blocking issues in this blog due to current changes in this Azure resource (and this is a good thing).