Exploratory software is developed to review the DLT IOTA. It is built for my end of year research project at the University of Bath for a Msc in Computer science.
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The software stores real-time data from any device on IOTA's tangle
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Device data is categorised using MQTT topics
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MQTT is also used for devices to discover data streams by sharing tags
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Supports flexible node configurations
To run any of the scripts the Python IOTA API library, PyOTA, needs to be installed. To install PyOTA, run the command below in the command line:
pip install pyota
To find further installation instructions, they can be found at:
https://github.com/iotaledger/iota.lib.py
The deployment works so that all you have to do is pass in the relevant configuration settings in to the Client class
parameters (found in client.py).
To create a device script, a client object is needed, it has 10 parameters: When running any of the device scripts you will be asked to name the device, the input given will be passed in the parameter of the client class. This is so devices can identify who is posting data.
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device_type: State the type of the device, e.g. sensor, monitor etc.\ -
network_name: Name your network -
seed: An Iota seed (details of how to obtain one are below) -
device_name: Name of the device. This is required, so if a name is not given, user input will be requested -
encrypt: Whether you want to encrypt data on the tangle or not -
reuse_address: Option to re-use addresses, not recommened but improves performance
To create a seed use a command, found below, in a terminal window:
Mac OS:
$ cat /dev/urandom |LC_ALL=C tr -dc 'A-Z9'| fold -w 81 | head -n 1
Linux:
$ cat /dev/urandom |tr -dc A-Z9|head -c${1:-81}
MQTT is used as the communication protocol for devices. Devices will publish their type, name and Tag to MQTT topics.
Any device set up with the same network_name can find devices on that network.
7. mqtt_broker: To use MQTT, you must be connected to a broker. The broker is in charge of handling messages
and ensuring clients can subscribe and publish to topics. Public brokers can be found online or you can run your
own broker from your machine. This software used eclipse mosquitto for the message broker.
Once a client object has been created, accessing the MQTT client from the client object you gain access to the find_device_tags method.
The user_input.py provides a way to request the number_of_streams and known_devices as user input before the method is called.
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read_from: State which device type you wish to read from -
number_of_streams: Number of streams you want to read from, default is 1 device -
known_devices: List of devices you want to read from
To interact with the tangle, you need to connect to a synced IOTA node. The parameters that concern the IOTA node are:
8.iota_node: The IOTA node you wish to connect to, you will need the URI of the node
9.route_pow [Optional]: Determines if you wish to dedicate the proof of work to another node
10.pow_node [Optional]: If you wish to route your proof of work, state the relevant IOTA node
The current configuration connects to the IOTA devnet using one of the public IOTA devnet nodes. This can be changed to
connect to the mainnet (not recommended) by entering the URI of an IOTA node in iota_node. If you do not want to
run your own node you can find public nodes in the IOTA discord chat room. Proof of work is also routed because a lot of
public IOTA devnet nodes do not offer the proof of work, instead a locally running node with no neighbours is used for
proof of work. Setting up a locally running node can be done by following the instructions found at:
https://github.com/iotaledger/iri
Once you have the iri installed correctly, open up the terminal on your machine navigate to the directory
with iri-1.5.0.jar and run the command:
java -jar iri-1.5.0.jar -p 14265 --testnet --remote
Note: The version of the IRI may have changed so ensure you run the command with the right version
To run the device scripts, ensure this git repository is downloaded or cloned into a directory on your machine which has access to the PyOTA library.
To clone this repository using the command line, navigate to the appropriate directory and use the command:
git clone https://github.com/eddumpy/IOTA-application.git
The device scripts directory contains python files that imitate programs run on IoT devices. You can create your own device scripts and then make use of the client class to store data in the tangle or set up your own network of devices.