I thought I'd share a little about myself to help others know why I'm here. If you're not interested, just click on to the next thread / topic. 
My career has been an interesting one, I've done everything from building computers to software installation to application development on different platforms, e.g. AS/400, Windows, and Unix.
A few years back, I started getting interested in the world of AI / data science at AWS re:invent 2017 - where I received a DeepLens device and started being immersed in how machine learning works.
Fast forward to 2019 and I'm now enrolled in a masters of data science degree and my career has shifted from working with websites to working with data.
IoT has always interested me, but I never knew why - and this is probably painfully obvious to some - and I just needed an aha moment, but IoT devices generate a lot of data - which I now realize underneath the surface is what makes me interested in IoT.
By taking the time to learn electronics and how devices generate data and issues encountered with the generation of data, I will be able to refine my analytical skills because of the detailed understanding that I am working to acquire here on element14.
Understanding this also has made me self-aware of the reason why I have interests in these projects of a "drink-dispenser", IoT with Azure / AWS, data logging and so on - is that these projects all work toward helping me understand how sensors collect the data and the being able to ingest the data for analytics.
In looking at my activities on element14, I signed up for the Azure IoT Sensing the World because it's a way for me to learn about Azure IoT - admittedly I'm more interested in AWS IoT which is why I started looking at the ESP32. AWS re:invent 2019 has a drink dispenser session of which I will be attending and attempting to glean additional information. It seems from the past two year sessions at re:invent that they shared online, it looks like they used the ESP32 along with Mongoose OS (2017) / and AWS FreeRTOS in 2018.
aws re:invent 2017 https://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/building-an-aws-iotenabled-drink-dispenser-iot328-reinvent-2017
aws re:invent 2018 https://www.slideshare.net/AmazonWebServices/building-an-aws-iotenabled-drink-dispenser-iot405-aws-reinvent-2018
One of the slides shared in the 2018 link is helping me to understand how everything works together
Additionally in 2018, AWS posted a nice little article on how to connect ESP32 using AWS FreeRTOS https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/apn/connect-microcontroller-based-devices-to-the-cloud-with-amazon-freertos-and-espressif-e…
So the next upcoming posts will be focused on how the ESP32 micro-controller connects to AWS IoT and then my goal with the the ESP32 and the drink dispenser is how the ESP32 can be programmed to interact with physical devices, e.g. pumps, read sensors and so on.
If you've stuck it out this far in reading this post, I would love to hear about your own personal experiences with any of the above. I am also open to receiving guidance and recommendations.
Thank you,
-brian
