Integrating physical devices with IOTA — The IOTA LED Cube

Integrating physical devices with IOTA — The IOTA LED CubeThe 11th part in a series of beginner tutorials on integrating physical devices with the IOTA protocol.

Introduction

This is the 11th part in a series of beginner tutorials where we explore integrating physical devices with the IOTA protocol. Its been i while since i published the last tutorial in this series as i have had to make some other priorities. This will change over the next coming months as i now have received donations from the IOTA development fund that will allow me to continue making these tutorials.

While on the topic, i would like to express my honor and thanks to everyone who have donated to the IOTA development fund. In a space where most actions are fueled by short sighted speculation and greed, the IOTA development fund is truly a unique construct that separate IOTA from other projects.

I was thinking we could start off with a smaller project that has more of a “fun” factor than an actual practical use-case. Beside being a cool and fun project to make, this tutorial is still important as it will give you an introduction to a useful feature of the IOTA tangle, namely the Zero Message Que, or ZMQ for short.

The primary goal of this tutorial is to use an LED cube to visualize the transaction throughput if the IOTA tangle.

The Use Case

As mentioned in the previous section, finding a practical use-case for this particular tutorial might be far fetched. However, learning more about ZMQ and ZMQ streams is always useful as it can be applied to many other real life use cases. One example is the popular tanglemonitor.com

For the sake of relating this tutorial to the other tutorials in this series. I guess you could imagine the hotel owner placing an LED cube in the reception of his hotel as an interesting visual ornament.