Book Review: Arduino Networking, by Marco Schwartz

Hey all. Been a while. Hope you've all been having fun adventures ;-)
I recently got a copy of the book "Arduino Networking" from Packtpub, for review purposes. Its written by Marco Schwartz of http://www.openhomeautomation.net.
It contains six chapters. The first is essentially about getting set up. Here you learn about the materials needed, how to connect them and test that they're ready for network/internet based interaction.
Chapter Two deals with using the Arduino to send sensor data to a remote server. Both local and internet-based server scenarios are explored.
Chapter Three deals with using the Arduino to log sensor data to an SD card, and having it act as a server which serves sensor data to clients.
Chapter Four talks about how to control the Arduino over the internet.
Chapter Five talks about logging data to the Xively cloud platform, and Chapter Six talks about using the Temboo platform to interact with other online services (Gmail and Google Spreadsheets in this case).
I found the book very well written: the writing style is linear, so you can literally read it from beginning to end and follow through with what's going on. In addition, the technical details are top-notch and easily adapted to particular scenarios.
I had exactly one grouse with the book; sometimes I wish he explained some of the technical concepts (e.g REST or JSON, which are both mentioned) a little bit more. But then again, its a book on Arduino Networking and not an intro to networking and web technologies, so I get that.
All in all, it was a concise, very hands-on guide to essentially 100% of use cases for network-connected Arduinos. I Definitely +1 this.
Go right ahead and add this to your bookshelf, then thank me later :-D
Be seeing you all again soon, I hope....

M.

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