Overview

Sensor control is accomplished through a RESTful API. The API is designed to be rich enough that multiple heterogeneous sensors can be automated effectively while being simple enough to still be useful for single-sensor deployments. For example, by advertising capabilities and location, an owner of multiple sensors can easily filter by frequency range, available actions, or geographic location. Yet, since each sensor hosts its own Browsable API, controlling small deployments is as easy as clicking around a website.

Opening the URL to your sensor (localhost if you followed Tutorial 1) in a browser, you will see a frontend to the API that allows you to do anything the JSON API allows. Relationships in the API are represented by URLs which you can click to navigate from endpoint to endpoint. The full API is discoverable simply by following these links:

Scheduling an action is as simple as filling out a short form on /schedule:

Actions that have been scheduled show up in the schedule entry list:

We have tried to remove the most common hurdles to remotely deploying a sensor while maintaining flexibility in two key areas. First, the API itself is hardware agnostic, and the implementation assumes different hardware will be used depending on sensing requirements. Second, we introduce the high-level concept of "actions" which gives the sensor owner control over what the sensor can be tasked to do. Read more about actions on the dedicated Actions wiki page. For more information about hardware support, refer to the Hardware Support page. Finally, for a glossary of terms, see Glossary