Smart device

Smart devices are hardware entities that consist of a sensor, or actuator, or both, any micro controller or micro processor, in our case, a Raspberry pi 3.

A sensor is an electronic component that can sense or measure a physical property and relay it back to a microcontroller or a microprocessor. The data relayed back can be periodic or event-driven; event-driven as in when there is change in data only. A temperature sensor such as an LM35 or DHT11 is an example of a sensor.

An actuator is also an electro-mechanical component that can trigger actions in the real world. Generally, the actuators do not act by themselves. A microcontroller, a microprocessor, or an electronic logic sends signals to the actuator. An example of an actuator is a mechanical relay.

The micro-processor we were referring would be a Raspberry Pi 3 for this book.

The Raspberry Pi 3 is a single-board computer, designed and developed by the Raspberry Pi foundation. The Raspberry Pi 3 is the third-generation Raspberry Pi.

In this book, we are going to use a Raspberry Pi 3 model B for all the examples. Some of the specifications of the Raspberry Pi 3 model B are as follows:

For more information on the specifications, please refer to the specifications of Raspberry Pi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raspberry_Pi#Specifications.