Getting started with Azure Sphere

Azure Sphere - MT 3620 on my work desk

Note: This is first of a series of blog posts that are related to my work done on Azure Sphere. Stay tuned for more on Azure Sphere.

Introduction

One of the best to learn a new technology is to just get hands dirty start work on the new technology. In this blog,  I will take you through the steps that I carried out in order to start work on Azure Sphere.

Once you have received the Azure Sphere device, it's time to get started. Here is the link https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/azure-sphere/get-started/that will take you through the steps of acquiring a Azure Sphere device.

1. The very step is to attached the device with your development machine. If you have the correct operating system then the device manager should automatically install the drivers. In my case the drivers for the device did not install automatically so I had to go to a special page that allowed me to download the drivers. Visit http://www.ftdichip.com/Drivers/VCP.htm to download the driver. The following image shows the driver that I downloaded for my development machine:

2. Once you downloaded and install the drivers, your device manager should look like as the following image.

Notice the three USB Serial Ports (in my case I got COM 4, COM 6 and COM 7)


3. Download Install Azure Sphere SDK for Visual Studio Preview.

4. The Azure Sphere SDK for Visual Studio Preview would install the Azure Sphere Developer Command Prompt Preview. This command line utility is your bridge between the Azure Sphere device and your development effort.

5. Run azsphere login command on  "Azure Sphere Developer Command Prompt Preview" to ensure you can Azure Sphere SDK has been properly installed and you can access your subscription.

6. Creating a Tenant
azsphere tenant create --name mytenant

0000000-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxxxxx mytenant

7. Claiming the device

azsphere device claim

Claiming device.

Successfully claimed device ID 'XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX' into tenant 'afrinish' with ID '0000000-xxxx-xxxx-xxxxx-xxxxxxxxxx'.

Command completed successfully in 00:00:03.3873192.

8. Configure Wi-Fi

azsphere device wifi add --ssid [[yourSSID]] --key [[yourNetworkKey]]

Running the command would yield the following output.

Add network succeeded:

ID                  : 0

SSID                : XXXXXXXXXX

Configuration state : enabled

Connection state    : unknown

Security state      : psk

Command completed successfully in 00:00:02.0253617.

Conclusion

In this blogpost, we have gone through the steps of getting started with Azure Sphere. We started off by acquiring the device, installing necessary software and drivers, configuring the device and connecting it the Wi-Fi. If there any any issues, please use the comments section to ask questions.

The next step would be to start developing. Happy coding!