IoT Hardware

The Internet has enabled developers to create solutions that produce data that can be viewed by anyone anywhere in the world. Adapting prototypes or smaller versions of a solution to incorporate the Internet is not as simple as taking a working solution on a local network or similar communication mechanism and adding Internet connectivity. For example, growing a sensor network from a few sensors monitoring data viewed by a few people to a sensor network incorporating tens of thousands of sensors with the data viewable by potentially everyone may require redesigning communication methods, data collection, and data storage. There is much more to IoT than scaling a solution for Internet access. Fortunately, books and similar media avoid the sales pitch to expand on the science and technology for implementing and managing IoT solutions, while other texts concentrate on the future or the inevitable evolution of our society as we become more connected to the world around us each and every day. However, those new to IoT need not dive into such tomes or be able to recite rhetoric, undergo intensive hardware training or purchase expensive hardware to get started creating IoT solutions. Rather, one need only understand a few basic concepts of IoT solutions to use existing hardware, sensors, and programming techniques to build an IoT solution. This chapter introduces the basics of IoT hardware the reader needs to start their own IoT projects.