Internet of Things Application Development: Things to Consider

by Saroj K. Online Marketing Expert

Thinking to build an application that could connect with anything and help you have ample power to control them with just a tap or swipe? Well, what was once part of Hollywood Sci-Fi movie had become a reality. Data ingestions platforms or IoT application development is that rare discipline that can make it happen for you.

IoT is no more hype to be found in the discourse of CIO, CTO, COO, or IT decision-makers. According to Intel, by 2020, there would be as many as 200 billion connected devices that will be relying on or harvesting data through RFID or other sensors over the Internet. Interestingly, the cost of these devices or chips has lowered much in the past few years. It’s not hard to figure out hardware manufacturers and marketers offering RFID tags between 7 and 15 U.S. cents. This has encouraged the IoT adoption. Hence, it’s imperative to ace the art of IoT application development.

Building Internet of Things Apps Raises Some Crucial Questions

Before embarking on IoT app development, here are a few questions that developers must answer: What’s methodology to adopt to build a perfect IoT app that can do anything, for instance from controlling home appliances remotely, to communicating a CNC operator that there is something wrong in the programming, to collecting meteorological data from sensors to produce a weather forecast? What skills are needed to do so? Where do you even begin? Discover how IoT works at different levels.

Getting Started! Sensors/RFIDs Connectivity

Well, when we talk of the Internet of Things, we are, in fact, interested in internalization of things. And these things are sensors or RFID tags as we have discussed. Surprisingly, like smartphones or tablets, don’t possess any screen but they are equipped with some sorts of embedded operating system and processor that make them connects with the data center of an enterprise or business over the Internet. In between a device and data center, there can be Internet gateway device – usually a plastic box with blinking lights.

Establishing Connection with Enterprise IT infrastructure

The data relayed by things are ingested by the software and hardware infrastructure of the business, which can be an on-premise based or a cloud-based (I-a-a-S), infrastructure as a service.

Organizing and Processing Data

The data received by the business IT infrastructure needs to be organized and processed appropriately so that it can be routed to different end-users without any error and time lapse.

End Users

Finally, comes the enterprise applications, web apps or any mobile apps through which the end users access the information. Based on the target platform, these apps might be based on different technology frameworks or languages.

What Should IoT Developers Focus Upon

If you're considering to create an Internet of Things application, the last two tiers need your attention the most. Frank Gillett, a principal analyst at Forrester, highlights: "As a developer, you're unlikely to have the tools for dealing with the edge devices or gateways, or capabilities suitable for the ingestion tier anyway."

The roles highlighted in the first two sections are performed by the ready-made Internet of Things platforms to the likes of Amazon Web Services (AWS) IoT, Microsoft Azure IoT and Google Cloud Platform (New). They can connect with physical objects over the Internet and can even help with managing them. Some lesser-known vendors include Xively, Mnubo, Bug Labs and ThingWorx.

These platforms are equipped with an ingestion tier that performs time-series archiving for incoming data, as well as an analytics tier, thin provisioning, activation and management capabilities, a real-time message bus, and an API to allow communication between the platform and applications built on top of it.

IoT Platform Eases IoT App Development

IoT developers can make use of the IoT platform to create applications that can collect, relay, and retrieve information from Internet-connected things. The information collected must be managed through a universal dashboard. Likewise, when the users are accessing the information, they should get it over the right user-interface. Hence, while creating the application for the end-users, developers and designers must work hand-in-glove to ensure that the native user experience is maintained across the targeted devices.