How to build your IoT Application from Scratch? An axess.ai Guide (Part 1)

Introduction

Let’s start by taking an example of a watch. Earlier, the watch was only capable of displaying time. Honestly, that’s it. But with increasing technology and connectivity, now your watch can be your portable mobile phone. Yes, I’m talking about intelligent wearables. The Internet of things connectivity has been advanced and updated at every staging so that in no time, everything will be easily accessible with one click to us. But, of course, you’ll need to do more than invest in technology to produce a working, useful IoT gadget. So before jumping in with both feet, take some time to master the basic IoT principles.

There are several approaches to creating an IoT device. However, successful organizations do a few crucial measures before launching their IoT device. So let’s dive deep into the blog to understand the critical components of an IoT platform. 

How to Develop IoT Platform from Scratch: The Architecture of an IoT Platform 

That’s what makes our work exciting. The Internet of things is not complex but highly saturated in the form of architecture. This architecture provides different prototypes to connect things in spaces. Let us understand the architecture of an IoT product and its functionality in a real-world scenario. 

There are 3 major components of an IoT architecture- 

1. IoT Hardware Device

2. Product Cloud 

3. Connectivity

These three components combine the full-fledged prototype of an IoT device or product. However, some of you might be aware of cloud and connectivity, similar to most mobile apps. But with IoT comes the intriguing part of managing the hardware together, which brings a few complexities. Let us understand each of them in detail so that next time you build your own IoT product, it becomes easier for you to understand things on a micro-level. 

IoT Hardware Cloud 

This is the most complicated and one-of-a-kind feature of an IoT device. Therefore, you should make a device that is tailored to your requirements.

An intelligent irrigation system requires sensors that measure moisture levels and interact with the pump. Still, sensors that detect movement or cameras are needed for a home security system, which must then be processed for intruders and alerted with an alarm or notification. To suit a given use case, one must choose or custom-build hardware components and software to run on that hardware. 

Product Hardware – A product’s hardware consists of a central processer/ controller responsible for the logical execution and a sensor and actuator for collecting data from the processor and acting on its commands. Consider this central processor/controller to be the brain, which is in charge of all reasoning, and the skin, eyes, hands, and legs to be sensors and actuators, which sense and report to the brain, which then provides the command to do some action. Microcontroller-based IoT boards and microprocessor-based IoT boards are based on this core unit.

Pins on the boards are input/output (IO) pins that connect to any sensors or actuators. It is also possible to use numerous microcontrollers/microprocessors to establish communication. 

You can simply choose a board that meets your needs, then utilize these IO pins to connect any sensors. Any sensor you select will very certainly work with all of the boards.

The following are some instances of sensors and actuators:

Sensors for temperature and humidity

Proximity Sensor Pressure Sensor

Ultrasonic Sensor

Relays

The code must be written mainly for the microcontroller or microprocessor. Because there are no operating systems like Linux or Windows that abstract the hardware variances, the software and tools you use to build are heavily influenced by the chip you choose. However, several frameworks attempt to handle a wide range of chips.

If you’re using a more capable IoT board, such as the Raspberry Pi, that can run full-fledged operating systems like Linux or Windows, and you’ll have to write a Linux or Windows application. You’d still need to make some hardware interactions to receive data from sensors.

Product Cloud

A product cloud is an extensive and adaptive cloud where the data is analyzed, received, and processed. Cloud gets the data from thousands of devices in a raw form. It then starts the work as it transforms the data, applies the business logic, stores data in a manner that is easily accessible, and power the application for the IoT product. Product cloud is also responsible for maintaining the health and status of all the field devices. These should be taken into account when designing cloud architecture-

• To avoid message throttling, separate the message receiving layer from the processing layer.
• Always keep in mind the possibility of gadgets becoming offline or malfunctioning.
• Have a plan in place for over-the-air updates (there will always be bugs and changes in requirements)
• Because data will quickly grow in size, use a database that scales well.
• Every communication should be encrypted.
• Set up an authentication mechanism so that a device can’t send messages to another device or subscribe to channels that it isn’t authorized to subscribe to.
• Keep track of each device’s current condition in the cloud.

Connectivity

Connectivity is essential, but it depends upon the environment where your product is set up. For example, most homes IoT will have Wifi as it is easily accessible and readily available in every house. But what if you’re establishing an air quality meter across town and WiFi isn’t available? You might opt for GSM/GPRS instead.

Now, suppose you have hundreds of sensors distributed across acres. In that case, you’d want to use radio communication to communicate with a central control center and then send all of that data to the internet if necessary. As a result, communication technologies are chosen by use cases. 

Successful Business’s Use Case of IoT  

The IoT use cases can vary from industry to organization and how they utilize the IoT dashboards to conduct business. Researchers at Statista predicted similarly high growth, saying the global IoT market for end-user offerings was expected to grow from $212 billion in 2019 to $1.6 trillion by 2025.  Statista also predicted that 75 billion IoT devices will be in use by 2023, generating 79.4 zettabytes of data.

Cisco

Cisco Systems offers a wide range of networking, IoT, mobility & wireless, security, collaboration, data center, and other products and services. Cisco is well-known for creating, manufacturing, and distributing networking technologies based on the Internet Protocol and goods linked to the communications and IT industries. In addition, it offers IoT Networking, IoT Gateways, IoT Operations Management, IoT Data Management, and IoT Security solutions.

Huawei 

Huawei is multinational telecommunication, consumer electronics, and networking equipment firm. It offers various services in IoT vertical like intelligent water systems and AMI smoke Detection, Smart Meter Reading, Shared Bike Lock Elevator Elevators, Smart Parking, Smart Gas, Smart Buildings, etc.

IBM

IBM is a global leader in developing and distributing computer hardware, middleware, and software. It also offers to host and to consulting services in various fields, from mainframe computers to nanotechnology.

IoT Platform, Watson IoT, Enterprise Asset Management, Facilities Management, and Systems Engineering are some of IBM’s IoT solutions. It offers services in finance, banking, retail, government, telecommunications, media, and entertainment, among other industries. 

Conclusion

Building your own IoT application from the ground up is a pretty hefty ordeal. In our next blog, we discuss the Pros and Cons of building your own IoT Platform, as well as the challenges you might face in creating everything from scratch. We also discuss some alternatives to building your own platform, such as investing in SaaS IoT Platform provider, which might exponentially cut down your Time to Delivery as well as your final product costs.