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Introduction

This chapter will give you a broad overview of how to build your IoT-FS smart home.

Building your own self-hosted IoT infrastructure is both easier than you think and more work than you think. You will be learning a lot of concepts and managing a lot of software, most of which you won't have a good understanding of. At this point you're probably thinking one of two things-

  • "Ugh, this is too much work."
  • "Wow, that's a lot of opportunity for learning!"

If you're able, I encourage you to focus on the learning aspect. You will have a lot of that to do, and some of it will come in the form of making mistakes. My hope in writing this book is that you will make your own mistakes, not repeat mine.

To find success you will need to do your own deep diving from time to time. Do not be afraid to seek out documentation, videos, and other support and knowledge while you work on your IoT-FS project.

Target Audience

This book assumes you already have a basic understand of developing software in at least one programming language. You should already be familiar with concepts like editing plain text files, writing structured files like JSON and YAML, and using HTTP or other network protocols. You don't need to know any language in particular, you can run someone else's code without knowing the programming language, and you can write your own services in whatever language you want.

If your current or desired job title is on this list, IoT-FS is an excellent way to develop your skills and build a portfolio of personal projects to show off.

  • Programmer
  • Software Engineer
  • DevOps
  • Site Reliability Engineer
  • Infrastructure/Platform Engineer