January Boston useR: Using R to Understand the Internet of Things

Tech Talk: Using R to Understand the Internet of Things (IoT)
Carl Howe, Director of Education, RStudio

Today’s home Internet of Things devices—solar panels, smart power meters, security cameras, and weather stations— are a maze of custom hardware, real-time operating systems, and proprietary smartphone apps. Worse, the costs for commercial monitoring services and devices needed to understand their operation can add up to big monthly bills.

Fortunately, most of these devices can be easily understood using simple R programs and a commodity software defined radio (SDR) dongle running on a cheap Raspberry Pi. In this Tech Talk, Carl will demonstrate a simple home monitoring solution built using those tools and illustrate how R can be used for these real-time applications. The talk will conclude by describing the R packages and programming techniques needed to interact with real-time devices and how these differ from traditional R programs.

*Pizza will be provided by RStudio