Prototyping Internet of Things Ideas and Networks - Book Excerpts

Microcontroller is the main component to build an IoT Device.

Dig further into the ways of interfacing microcontroller with the real world using the “Interfacing with Hardware” page on the Arduino Playground website:(http://playground.arduino.cc//Main/InterfacingWithHardware). .

From the perspective of the electronics, the starting point for prototyping is usually a “breadboard”. This lets you push-fit components and wires to make up circuits without requiring any soldering and therefore makes experimentation easy.

8-bit microcontrollers are still in use, although the price of 32-bit microcontrollers is now dropping to the level where they’re starting to be edged out.

There are lots of microcontroller manufacturers (Atmel, Microchip, NXP, Texas Instruments, to name a few), each with a range of chips for different applications.

The ubiquitous Arduino platform is based around Atmel’s AVR ATmega family of microcontroller chips.

SYSTEM-ON-CHIPS
In between the low-end microcontroller and a full-blown PC sits the SoC (the Raspberry Pi).

RAM
If you want to run standard encryption protocols, you will need at least 4KB RAM, and preferably more.


Networking

The device has to connect to the rest of the world. Wired Ethernet is often the simplest for the user and cheapest, but it requires a physical cable. Wireless solutions avoid that requirement with a more complicated configuration. WiFi is the most widely deployed to provide an existing infrastructure for connections, but it can be more expensive and consumes more power  than some of its competitors.  ZigBee is a technology aimed particularly at sensor networks and scenarios such as home automation. The recent Bluetooth LE protocol (also known as Bluetooth 4.0) has a very low power-consumption profile similar to ZigBee. Standard Bluetooth chips included in phones and laptops.


USB
If your device can rely on a more powerful computer being nearby, tethering to it via USB can be an easy way to provide both power and networking. Some of the microcontrollers can be bought in versions which include support for USB, so choosing one of them reduces the need for an extra chip in your circuit.

Instead of the microcontroller presenting itself as a device, some can also act as the USB “host”. This configuration lets you connect items that would normally expect to be connected to a computer—devices such as phones, for example, using the Android ADK, additional storage capacity, or WiFi
dongles.

Interfacing with Sensors and Other Circuitry
The device has to interact with sensors to gather data about its environment and motors, LEDs, screens, and so on, to provide output. You could connect to the circuitry through some sort of peripheral bus—SPI and I2C being common ones—or through ADC or DAC modules to read or write varying voltages; or through generic GPIO pins, which provide digital on/off inputs or outputs. Different microcontrollers or SoC solutions offer different mixtures of these interfaces in differing numbers.

Arduino board

The “standard” Arduino board has gone through a number of iterations: Arduino NG, Diecimila, Duemilanove, and Uno. The Uno features an ATmega328 microcontroller and a USB socket for
connection to a computer. It has 32KB of storage and 2KB of RAM,

The Uno also provides 14 GPIO pins (of which 6 can also provide PWM output) and 6 10-bit resolution ADC pins. The ATmega’s serial port is made available through both the IO pins, and, via an additional chip, the USB connector.

Integrated Development Environment
To develop using  the Arduino, the integrated development environment (IDE) that the team supply at http://arduino.cc is used. This is a fully functional IDE, based on the one used for the Processing language (http://processing.org/). Most Arduino projects consist of a single file of code. IDE mostly is a simple file editor. You use it  to check the code (by compiling it) and to push code to the board.

Language
The language usually used for Arduino is a slightly modified dialect of C++ derived from the Wiring platform. It includes some libraries used to read and write data from the I/O pins provided on the Arduino and to do some basic handling for “interrupts” (a way of doing multitasking, at a very low level).
This variant of C++ tries to be forgiving about the ordering of code; for example, it allows you to call functions before they are defined.

The code needs to provide only two routines:
◾ setup(): This routine is run once when the board first boots. You
could use it to set the modes of I/O pins to input or output or to prepare
a data structure which will be used throughout the program.
◾ loop(): This routine is run repeatedly in a tight loop while the Arduino is switched on. Typically, you might check some input, do  some calculation on it, and perhaps do some output in response.

In the absence of a screen, the Arduino allows you to write information over the USB cable using Serial.write(). For debugging,  information can be accessed using it.  The Arduino IDE provides a serial monitor which echoes the data that the Arduino has sent over the USB cable. This could
include any textual information, such as logging information, comments, and details about the data that the Arduino is receiving and processing (to double-check that your calculations are doing the right thing).


The Arduino can be powered using a USB connection from your computer. This capability is usually quite convenient during prototyping because you need the serial connection in any case to program the board. The Arduino also has a socket for an external power supply.

RASPBERRY PI

Raspberry Pi is effectively a computer that can run a real, modern operating system, communicate with a keyboard and mouse, talk to the Internet, and drive a TV/monitor with high-resolution graphics. The Pi Model B has built-in Ethernet. Many makers blogged about their own attempts to use Raspberry Pi and have contributed designs to Thingiverse, Instructables, and others.

Extension boards and other accessories are already available for the Raspberry Pi. Many interesting kits are in development, such as the Gertboard (www.raspberrypi.org/archives/tag/gertboard), designed for conveniently playing with the GPIO pins.


To seriously explore the Raspberry Pi, a copy of the Raspberry Pi User Guide, by Eben Upton and Gareth Halfacree (Wiley, 2012) is to be consulted.

Operating System
For Internet of Things work on Pi, use the Linux based Adafruit distro.  The main tweaks of  interest in it are:
◾ The sshd (SSH protocol daemon) is enabled by default, so you can connect to the console remotely.
◾ The device registers itself using zero-configuration networking (zeroconf) with the name raspberrypi.local, so you don’t need to know or guess which IP address it picks up from the network in order to make a connection.

Programming Language
 The Pi Foundation, suggests Python. (and indeed the name “Pi” comes initially from Python).

Readily available libraries on PyPi
(https://pypi.python.org/pypi) may  provide code that other people have written, used, and thoroughly tested.

Node.js is used by some board brands.

Node.js is a platform built on Chrome’s JavaScript runtime for easily building fast, scalable network applications. Node.js uses an event-driven, non-blocking I/O model that makes it lightweight
and efficient, perfect for data-intensive real-time applications that run across distributed devices.
—http://nodejs.org/

Node.js is a rich environment with a host of libraries available to integrate into the app. Currently, the convenient npm (Node Packaged Modules) utility isn’t bundled with the IDE, but this is an item for a future version. In the meantime, online help and forums should get you over any possible stumbling blocks.

IoT Prototyping with Node.js and Firebase (Ubiquity Dev Summit 2016)

Google Developers
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GETTING STARTED WITH AN API
The most important part of a web service, with regards to an Internet of Things device, is the Application Programming Interface, or API. An API is a way of accessing a service  to interact with another computer application.  The interaction can be with a cloud application.

Excerpts from the Book

Designing the Internet of Things

by Adrian McEwen and Hakim Cassimally
Wiley, 2014






Create Prototypes and Get to Market Faster Using Intel® Edison Technology
Intel® Edison technology is a hardware and software platform that, when combined with sensors and your imagination, empowers you to invent new Internet-enabled products and solutions.
https://software.intel.com/en-us/iot/hardware/edison

Prototyping tools for the Internet of Things
Our hardware development kits give you a microcontroller and connectivity (Wi-Fi or cellular) along with powerful software development tools and a cloud back-end. Add the internet to your product with a single line of code.
https://www.particle.io/prototype

Internet of Things Hardware Round-up

Below is a list of some popular boards and development platforms to help you with your latest prototype or DIY project.
http://postscapes.com/internet-of-things-hardware

As a platform, shiftr.io provides you with the ability to share your data and access data of others. Sharing data publicly is encouraged by the platform's design. In the future, we plan to have additional features that allow more interactions between users and their namespaces.

Using shiftr.io everyone is able to rapidly prototype connected objects and build a network of connected things. Start building prototypes for the Internet of Things now!
https://shiftr.io/


SCALING TO A PROTOTYPE USING INTEL® IOT TECHNOLOGY
Joe W.'s picture Joe W., March 4, 2016
https://software.intel.com/en-us/blogs/2016/03/04/scaling-to-a-prototype-on-intel-iot-architecture

A Rapid IoT Prototyping Toolkit
Shayne Hodge
January 12, 2016
http://iot.ieee.org/newsletter/january-2016/a-rapid-iot-prototyping-toolkit.html

Prototyping Connected Devices for the Internet of Things
Steve Hodges, Stuart Taylor, Nicolas Villar, and James Scott, Microsoft Research Cambridge, UK
Dominik Bial, University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany
Patrick Tobias Fischer, University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK
http://research.microsoft.com/pubs/187495/06357162.pdf

FUN WITH THE ARDUINO 101
paul-guermonprez (Intel)'s picture paul-guermonprez (Intel), December 25, 2015
https://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/fun-with-the-arduino-101-genuino-101

IoT prototyping with LittleBits & Arduino
by mike vladimer / November 2, 2015
http://www.orangesv.com/blog/iot-prototyping-is-easier-than-you-think-with-littlebits-arduino/

IoT Prototyping With Arduino
Carl Krupitzer  |   September 24, 2015
http://www.thinglogix.com/iot-prototyping-with-arduino/

Tutorial: Prototyping a Sensor Node and IoT Gateway with Arduino and Raspberry Pi – Part 1
Interesting explanation - Sensor node - Field Gateway - Cloud gateway
10 MONTHS AGO, BY JANAKIRAM MSV
June 2015
http://thenewstack.io/tutorial-prototyping-a-sensor-node-and-iot-gateway-with-arduino-and-raspberry-pi-part-1/


OPITZ CONSULTING’s own IoT prototype to demonstrate capabilities (part 1)
https://thecattlecrew.net/2014/06/18/opitz-consultings-own-iot-prototype-to-demonstrate-capabilities-part-1/

IoT prototype – Retrospective. What did we learn? What did we miss? (part 5)
https://thecattlecrew.net/2014/06/18/iot-prototype-retrospective-what-did-we-learn-what-did-we-miss-part-5/


http://littlebits.cc/projects

https://tessel.io/

Lightwatch : An IOT prototype using XMPP and Android
Oct 2015
http://www.iot-hub.org/2015/10/lightwatch-iot-prototype-using-xmpp-and.html

Node-RED: How it simplifed my IoT project – and how YOU can rapidly prototype for the Internet of Things
Aug 2014
https://utbrudd.bouvet.no/2014/08/04/node-red-how-it-simplifed-my-iot-project-and-how-you-can-rapidly-prototype-for-the-internet-of-things/

India Events

Internet of Things, Mumbai (IoTMUM)
Learn basics of Arduino & Its application in Internet of Things..

Arduino Hands-on Workshop by YUPS Tech Solutions Pvt. Ltd. and Home Automation demo by Parth Temkar (Uses Arduino)

Arduino for IoTiets!
Sep 7, 2014 · 10:00 AM
http://www.meetup.com/IoTMUM/events/197179892/