The Azure IoT DevKit is an Arduino compatible board which is ready to use in conjunction with Azure IoT Hub to build an end-to-end IoT system. Code running on the board is native C and you deploy to the board using Visual Studio Code over the included USB cable. Then your device uses WiFi to establish a connection back to Azure where you can process data received from the device in a number of ways. Two-way messaging is supported so you can respond to the device and send commands to control it. Basically the possibilities are endless!
The board itself has a number of sensors – temperature, pressure, humidity, movement and an RGB LED and a small (but very clear) display for output. Other inputs and outputs are possible by attaching to the edge connector which is the same as the microbit. The package consists of the board and USB cable in a neat little cardboard box.
Everything you need software-wise is explained on this GitHub site along with a number of sample apps. It’s even possible to deploy the required IoT Hub and services to your Azure account automatically.
There are three suppliers listed on the “Get a Kit” page and at the time of looking only Plugable had stock but don’t ship internationally. Luckily I was able to find Mouser who had stock and ship to the UK. It only took a couple of days to ship from the US.
I’ll revisit this when I look at setting up the software and provisioning a working program.
In The Hand Ltd 
2 replies on “First Steps with Azure IoT DevKit”
That was very useful and extremely well done. Thank you for spending the time to to it.
[…] board the possibilities are endless when you consider attaching external devices. As I mentioned in my previous post, the DevKit has an edge connector with a number of input/output pins as well as power. You’ll […]