Techorama Antwerp 2022, human connection

Techorama is a conference that has long been on my list of conferences to attend, but for some reason I never went. Looking back I think I had this idea that world class conferences could only be held in the US (or in a place far-far away from home) with thousands of visitors. I was dead wrong. What the organizers understood perfectly is that in order to have a world class conference, you should offer the same smooth, convenient and rich experience with the very best speakers, but then at a smaller scale. Continue reading

Register ESP32 to DPS & IoT hub - IoT with C#

In my previous post I flashed my ESP32 with the nanoframework.net, allowing me to write C# code in Visual Studio with all bells and whistles. As life goes… the device landed in my drawer until this week where I had some time to experiment. This time I wanted to hook up the device to Azure IoT hub using the Device Provisioning Service (DPS) which brings me one step closer to my goal, performing device updates over-the-air… Continue reading

From 0 to 100 in 30 minutes - IoT with C#

My interest for the Internet of Things (IoT) was sparked many moons ago, way before the name was born. Back in the days I wrote software for PalmOS devices, and I was intrigued by having raw processor power in my Pocket. Don’t get me wrong, back then we where talking Megahertz instead of Gigahertz and Kilobyte instead of Gigabyte. Having such limitations in processing power and memory tickled my creativity. When I had the opportunity to control hardware (gps, electronic locks etc) using the little devices I was sold. Continue reading

Running a persistent SQL Server in Docker

In IT we always want to work with the latest and greatest, it’s in our DNA to explore new technologies. From time-to-time you get confronted with legacy technologies, robust but boring. One of such things is a piece of software I wrote more than 15 years ago for a friend. It was an application using a SQL Server database that controlled a couple of weighing terminals connected over RS232. Controlling machines is every geek’s dream. Continue reading

Note to self: localhost in kestrel is localhost

In one of the projects I’m involved in, I ran into a problem. In this project we are building a solution that is running on a Linux based Edge Device connected to Azure. On the Edge device, a k3s cluster hosts a number of services required by the solution. In order to be able to develop and debug on a Linux environment, I equiped my system with Hyper-V, an internal NAT switch and a fresh copy of Ubuntu. Continue reading

Sometimes you need to reboot...

Almost a year ago I created this blog… I mean not exactly this blog, but its predecessor “blog.somethingazure.com”. I thought that the name did match the content. Fast Forward a couple of months in time…. I learned that my job as Azure Coding Architect involved quite a few more technology areas than just Azure. Furthermore I was not happy with the look-and-feel of the blog; it was visually not attractive. Time for a major overhaul! Continue reading

Multi-staged GitHub Pipeline

At the moment I’m working on some infrastructure pipelines to build and deploy Azure infrastructure for one of our clients. For me a cool project as I’m learning to work with technologies such as Bicep and GitHub actions. In this project we use GitHub actions for the CI/CD process. In this process every time a pull request is merged in the main branch, an automated build, test and deployment process is triggered. Continue reading