Muhammad Zulhimi Alias

Here’s an exclusive interview with Muhammad Zulhilmi Alias, one of REDtone IOT’s intern from Universiti Malaya. He started his practical training on August 29,2016 with no practical experience and knowledge about Internet of Things (IoT). He studied in Computer Science and now in Year 3. What he had achieved within 3 months is quite incredible.

Question (1) – Briefly explain about your project in REDtone IOT

My project is to create an agent to send sensor data from the Waspmote that is kept in Meshlium Database to the REDtone IOT platform.

Question (2) – What have you learned in this project?

Within 3 months period, I have learned about how to:

1. How to program the Waspmote sensor board to send sensor data to the Meshlium Database.
2. Understanding Java Database Connector(JDBC) which is an API for Java that defines how client may access the database.
3. How to make RESTful Java Client which is to perform basic REST service such as POST request.

Question (3) – What are the challenges in doing an IoT project?

There are several interesting challenges during my project:

1. The need to learn how a device can connect to the network in order to send data.
2. How to ensure that data from the sensor that is kept in the Meshlium Database is sent properly to the platform.
3. Ensuring my software program did not slow down the performance of the device.

Question (4) – Your recommendation to any student who wants to develop an IoT solution

I would recommend the students to learn the basic things about how the IoT works in general. They also need to know how to make sure that their IoT solution is not only secured but also have good performance.

IoT is still not well known to normal consumers in Malaysia. And sometimes people are still not convince with it. However, the tendency for every IoT projects to become bigger is very high. I’m looking forward to see the development of IoT in Malaysia and also the whole world – Zulhilmi (November 24, 2016)