Internet of Things (IoT) Fundamentals for Beginners

The IoT platform learners connect to on this course is part of Dr. Alfred Ang's own body of work, which makes this one of the most directly grounded courses Dr. Ang teaches. A full-stack AI developer, Agentic AI solution architect and corporate trainer, Dr. Ang is CTO of Tertiary Infotech Academy Pte Ltd in Singapore, the training organisation behind Tertiary Courses, and builds intelligent agents and business platforms end-to-end across front end, back end, databases, cloud deployment and native mobile apps. More than 300 public repositories on GitHub record that range. Dr. Ang built a low-code, self-hosted IoT platform powered by n8n that connects Arduino, ESP32 and Raspberry Pi boards over MQTT and HTTP, lets users control devices in real time from web and mobile through virtual pins, and automates behaviour with drag-and-drop workflows. Native companion apps for IoTFlow on iOS and Android add live dashboard widgets, device controls, telemetry charts, n8n automation triggers, alerts and a demo mode. The agent side draws on a wide set of n8n projects: an inventory forecasting agent running on a local language model through Ollama, a stock-analysis agent that reasons over live data before recommending action, retrieval-augmented chatbots, and an HR portal that keeps people in the loop for approvals. Combining sensor data with agents that decide and act is therefore not a speculative idea here but a natural extension of systems Dr. Ang already runs and maintains.

The course follows a complete build from bare board to autonomous system. Learners are introduced to agentic AI and IoT, set up the ESP8266, explore the IoTFlow platform at https://iot.tertiaryinfotech.com/ and connect their device to it. The second topic covers wiring sensors to the ESP8266, reading and publishing sensor data, controlling devices and actuators, and streaming data to IoTFlow, so that learners see live readings appear on a dashboard they can act on. AI agents arrive in the third topic: connecting agents to IoTFlow data, making decisions and triggering actions, and building an autonomous agent loop that senses, reasons and responds without a person pressing a button. The final topic brings everything together in an end-to-end agentic IoT project, coordinating multiple devices and agents, securing and monitoring the solution, and deploying and scaling it with IoTFlow. Because Dr. Ang knows the platform from the inside, learners get straight answers on how data flows through it, why a device drops off, and how to design automations that fail safely. Teaching is hands-on from the first hour, with real hardware on the bench, short explanations and plenty of time to experiment. Troubleshooting is treated as part of the learning, since loose wiring, unstable Wi-Fi and noisy sensor readings are exactly what real deployments face. Makers, engineers, facilities teams and educators all leave with a working sensor-to-agent system and the know-how to extend it. To explore the IoT platform, companion apps and agent projects behind this course, visit Dr. Ang's portfolio at https://github.com/alfredang