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IoT for Beginners - A Curriculum

Azure Cloud Advocates at Microsoft are excited to present a 12-week, 24-lesson curriculum focused on IoT fundamentals. Each lesson includes pre- and post-lesson quizzes, detailed instructions, solutions, assignments, and more. Our project-based approach ensures you learn by building, a proven method for retaining new skills.

The projects explore the journey of food from farm to table, covering farming, logistics, manufacturing, retail, and consumer stages—key industries for IoT applications.

Sketchnote by Nitya Narasimhan. Click the image for a larger version.

Special thanks to our authors Jen Fox, Jen Looper, Jim Bennett, and our sketchnote artist Nitya Narasimhan.

We also appreciate the contributions of our Microsoft Learn Student Ambassadors who have reviewed and translated this curriculum - Aditya Garg, Anurag Sharma, Arpita Das, Aryan Jain, Bhavesh Suneja, Faith Hunja, Lateefah Bello, Manvi Jha, Mireille Tan, Mohammad Iftekher (Iftu) Ebne Jalal, Mohammad Zulfikar, Priyanshu Srivastav, Thanmai Gowducheruvu, and Zina Kamel.

Meet the team!

Gif by Mohit Jaisal

🎥 Click the image above for a video about the project!

Teachers, we have included some suggestions on how to use this curriculum. If you want to create your own lessons, we’ve also provided a lesson template.

Students, to use this curriculum independently, fork the repository and complete the exercises starting with the pre-lesson quiz, then read the lecture and complete the activities. Try to build the projects by understanding the lessons rather than copying the solution code, although the code is available in the /solutions folders for each project-based lesson. Another idea is to form a study group with friends and go through the content together. For further study, we recommend Microsoft Learn.

For a video overview of this course, check out this video:

🎥 Click the image above for a video about the project!

Pedagogy

We’ve adopted two key teaching principles for this curriculum: making it project-based and including frequent quizzes. By the end of this series, students will have built a plant monitoring and watering system, a vehicle tracker, a smart factory setup to track and check food, and a voice-controlled cooking timer, while learning IoT basics such as device coding, cloud connectivity, telemetry analysis, and edge AI.

By aligning the content with projects, the learning process becomes more engaging, and concept retention is enhanced.

Additionally, a low-pressure quiz before class helps students focus on the topic, while a post-class quiz reinforces retention. This curriculum is designed to be flexible and enjoyable, allowing students to take it in full or in part. The projects start simple and grow more complex over the 12-week cycle.

Each project uses real-world hardware accessible to students and hobbyists. The curriculum also provides relevant background knowledge for each project domain. Understanding the domain helps developers solve problems effectively, and this context allows students to think about IoT solutions in real-world scenarios. Students learn the 'why' behind the solutions they build and gain an appreciation for the end user.

Hardware

We offer two IoT hardware options for the projects, depending on personal preferences, programming language knowledge, learning goals, and availability. A 'virtual hardware' version is also available for those without access to physical hardware or who want to learn more before purchasing. You can find a 'shopping list' and more details on the hardware page, including links to buy complete kits from Seeed Studio.

💁 Check out our Code of Conduct, Contributing, and Translation guidelines. We welcome your constructive feedback!

Each lesson includes:

sketchnote
optional supplemental video
pre-lesson warmup quiz
written lesson
for project-based lessons, step-by-step guides on how to build the project
knowledge checks
a challenge
supplemental reading
assignment
post-lesson quiz

A note about quizzes: All quizzes are located in the quiz-app folder, with a total of 48 quizzes, each containing three questions. They are linked within the lessons, but the quiz app can be run locally or deployed to Azure; follow the instructions in the quiz-app folder. Localization is being done gradually.

Lessons

	Project Name	Concepts Taught	Learning Objectives	Linked Lesson
01	Getting started	Introduction to IoT	Learn the basic principles of IoT and the fundamental components of IoT solutions, such as sensors and cloud services, while setting up your first IoT device	Introduction to IoT
02	Getting started	A deeper dive into IoT	Learn more about the components of an IoT system, as well as microcontrollers and single-board computers	A deeper dive into IoT
03	Getting started	Interact with the physical world with sensors and actuators	Learn about sensors to collect data from the physical world and actuators to provide feedback, while building a nightlight	Interact with the physical world with sensors and actuators
04	Getting started	Connect your device to the Internet	Learn how to connect an IoT device to the Internet to send and receive messages by connecting your nightlight to an MQTT broker	Connect your device to the Internet
05	Farm	Predict plant growth	Learn how to predict plant growth using temperature data collected by an IoT device	Predict plant growth
06	Farm	Detect soil moisture	Learn how to detect soil moisture and calibrate a soil moisture sensor	Detect soil moisture
07	Farm	Automated plant watering	Learn how to automate and schedule watering using a relay and MQTT	Automated plant watering
08	Farm	Migrate your plant to the cloud	Learn about the cloud and cloud-hosted IoT services, and how to connect your plant to one of these instead of a public MQTT broker	Migrate your plant to the cloud
09	Farm	Migrate your application logic to the cloud	Learn how to write application logic in the cloud that responds to IoT messages	Migrate your application logic to the cloud
10	Farm	Keep your plant secure	Learn about IoT security and how to keep your plant secure using keys and certificates	Keep your plant secure
11	Transport	Location tracking	Learn about GPS location tracking for IoT devices	Location tracking
12	Transport	Store location data	Learn how to store IoT data for visualization or analysis later	Store location data
13	Transport	Visualize location data	Learn about visualizing location data on a map and how maps represent the real 3D world in 2D	Visualize location data
14	Transport	Geofences	Learn about geofences and how they can be used to alert when vehicles in the supply chain are near their destination	Geofences
15	Manufacturing	Train a fruit quality detector	Learn how to train an image classifier in the cloud to detect fruit quality	Train a fruit quality detector
16	Manufacturing	Check fruit quality from an IoT device	Learn how to use your fruit quality detector from an IoT device	Check fruit quality from an IoT device
17	Manufacturing	Run your fruit detector on the edge	Learn how to run your fruit detector on an IoT device at the edge	Run your fruit detector on the edge
18	Manufacturing	Trigger fruit quality detection from a sensor	Learn how to trigger fruit quality detection using a sensor	Trigger fruit quality detection from a sensor
19	Retail	Train a stock detector	Learn how to use object detection to train a stock detector to count inventory in a store	Train a stock detector
20	Retail	Check stock from an IoT device	Learn how to check inventory from an IoT device using an object detection model	Check stock from an IoT device
21	Consumer	Recognize speech with an IoT device	Learn how to recognize speech from an IoT device to build a smart timer	Recognize speech with an IoT device
22	Consumer	Understand language	Learn how to understand sentences spoken to an IoT device	Understand language
23	Consumer	Set a timer and provide spoken feedback	Learn how to set a timer on an IoT device and provide spoken feedback on when the timer is set and when it finishes	Set a timer and provide spoken feedback
24	Consumer	Support multiple languages	Learn how to support multiple languages, both for input and responses from your smart timer	Support multiple languages

Offline access

You can run this documentation offline using Docsify. Fork this repository, install Docsify on your local machine, and then in the root folder of this repository, type docsify serve. The website will be served on port 3000 on your localhost: localhost:3000.

Quiz

Thanks to the community for hosting the interactive quiz that tests your knowledge of each chapter. You can test your knowledge here.

PDF

You can generate a PDF of this content for offline access if needed. To do this, ensure you have npm installed and run the following commands in the root folder of this repository:

npm i
npm run convert

Slides

Slide decks for some lessons are available in the slides folder.

Other Curricula

Our team creates other curricula! Check out:

Azure / Edge / MCP / Agents

Generative AI Series

Core Learning

Copilot Series

Image attributions

You can find all the attributions for the images used in this curriculum where required in the Attributions.

Disclaimer:
This document has been translated using the AI translation service Co-op Translator. While we strive for accuracy, please note that automated translations may contain errors or inaccuracies. The original document in its native language should be considered the authoritative source. For critical information, professional human translation is recommended. We are not responsible for any misunderstandings or misinterpretations resulting from the use of this translation.

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