Week 9 represents a fundamental shift in the project. For the past eight weeks, we’ve been building IoT systems - MQTT, InfluxDB, Grafana, cloud-oriented architectures. Week 9 is different. Week 9 is industrial automation. This isn’t about publishing sensor data to the cloud. It’s about PLC integration, SCADA systems, and factory floor protocols. It’s about Modbus TCP - the protocol that’s been running industrial plants since the 1970s. It’s about OPC-UA - the modern standard for industrial interoperability. ...

Week 7+8 represents project completion at the infrastructure level. This isn’t about adding one more feature - it’s about building the complete path from sensor to insight. After seven weeks: Week 1-3: Sensors talk via LoRa ✅ Week 5: Gateway firmware outputs JSON ✅ Week 6: Async service processes data ✅ Week 7: Data goes to MQTT and InfluxDB ✅ Week 8: Professional dashboards visualize everything ✅ This is a complete IoT monitoring system. From a temperature sensor on a breadboard to a Grafana dashboard refreshing every 10 seconds. All in Rust. All running on real hardware. ...

Week 6 marks a fundamental shift in the project. Up through Week 5, everything stayed within the embedded realm - microcontrollers talking to each other over LoRa. Data lived in OLED displays and defmt logs that disappeared when you closed the terminal. Week 6 changes that. It’s the bridge between embedded and cloud, between constrained systems and abundant infrastructure, between no_std and std. This is the week I learned async Rust isn’t just about performance - it’s about building systems that compose. ...