Hammer is to Nail as API is to Software

In this Digging into the Data Pipeline presentation, Andrew Balmos, data/software engineer at Purdue University, and Zach Mason, senior software engineer at Wabash Heartland Innovation Network, explain how APIs (Application Programming Interface) are around every corner of the Digital Ag Data Pipeline, from your computer software, to phone apps, and even IoT devices in the field.

Andrew shares background information on the various web API technologies, particularly HTTP based ones. Zach follows up with some live demonstrations of the API he built for the WHIN weather station network.

View the API presentation video here.

This video presentation is part of the Digging into the Data Pipeline webinar series hosted by the College of Agriculture at Purdue University.

View the Digging into the Data Pipeline playlist on Youtube.

This series was supported in part by the Wabash Heartland Innovation Network (WHIN).

Links from the Presentation

WHIN Data Portal: https://data.whin.org/

WHIN Weather Map: https://whin.org/weather/

API Resources: https://github.com/oada/oada-srvc-docker and https://github.com/oada/oada-docs

About the Presenters

Andrew Balmos works as a Software/Data Engineer for Purdue’s College of Agriculture within the Wabash Heartland Innovation Network project. As a Software/Data engineer, he works toward building demonstrations and capabilities for Purdue digital agriculture initiatives, Purdue farm test beds, and other regional efforts. In addition, Andrew assists in developing and presenting educational materials related to the adoption of digital and precision agriculture. Lastly, Andrew is a Ph.D. student of the Open Ag Systems and Technologies (OATS) center where his research focuses on an IoT/Edge computing platform for ag machinery called ISOBlue and an optimistic, vehicle-to-vehicle networking platform as a potential solution to common rural farm broadband problems.

Zach Mason has been Senior Software Engineer at WHIN since November 2019. He develops APIs for researchers and educators to access data streams from WHIN’s growing deployment of IoT devices. Zach has been developing custom software professionally for 12 years in a variety of industries including several agriculture startups.

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