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Foundational Elements of
an IoT Solution
The Edge, The Cloud, and
Application Development

Joe Biron and Jonathan Follett

Beijing Boston Farnham Sebastopol Tokyo

Foundational Elements of an IoT Solution
by Joe Biron and Jonathan Follett
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2016-03-30: First Release

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978-1-491-95097-5
[LSI]
 Table of Contents

1. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Building the Internet of Things 1

2. Solution Patterns for the Internet of Things. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Design Patterns and the IoT 5
Smart, Connected Products 7
Smart, Connected Operations 12
New and Innovative Experiences 15

3. The Edge of the IoT. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Living on the Edge 21
Edge Architecture Examples 35

4. The Cloud. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
Cloud-to-Device Connectivity 40
Device Ingress/Egress 44
Data Normalization and Protocol Translation 45
Infrastructure 46
APIs 47
The Topology of the Cloud 47

5. IoT Applications. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
The Semantic Model 52
Software UX Design Considerations 54
Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics 55
Rapid Application Development 59

v
A. Companies, Products, and Links. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

vi | Table of Contents
 CHAPTER 1
Introduction

The Internet of Things (IoT) has a rich technological legacy and a

bright future: ubiquitous connectivity has created a new paradigm,
and the closed, static, and bounded systems of the past will soon be
obsolete. With the connection of low-cost sensors to cloud plat‐
forms, it’s now possible to track, analyze, and respond to operational
data at scale. The promise of the IoT is indeed wonderful: intelligent
systems made up of smart machines that talk with each other and
with people in real time, and data analytics driving optimization and
transformation in industries as varied and far-reaching as aeronau‐
tics and agriculture, transportation and municipal services, manu‐
facturing and healthcare, and even within our homes.

Building the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things presents exciting opportunities to transform
business, but the specific approaches and patterns remain somewhat
ill-defined. So, maybe it’s not entirely surprising that the recent tidal
wave of marketing hype has engendered some well-deserved skepti‐
cism about the IoT’s true business and social value. Questions about
security and fears that such wide-ranging connectedness will make
privacy all but extinct are commonplace. These are legitimate issues
that are being addressed, and will require continuing maturity of
both the business and technology factors if the IoT is to achieve
long-term, broad-based success.
Regardless, it’s clear that, in order to take on the challenges of design
for this new connected world, engineers, designers, technologists,

1
and business people need to fundamentally shift their thinking. IoT
design will be quite different from design for other complex systems;
data will be the critical material, shared across open and flexible net‐
works. Making the most of IoT for your business requires strategic
thinking and careful planning.
If you don’t quite know where to start with the IoT, you’ve come to
the right place. This guide is for those who have heard both the
grand promise and the skeptical inquiries and nevertheless want to
get their boots on the ground. The guide introduces you to the high-
level concepts, components, and patterns for any type of IoT solu‐
tion. It will help you to understand the technology and architecture,
so that you, the technologist, can dispel misconceptions within your
organization and assess the opportunities for the IoT to advance
your business. The potential of the IoT may well be limitless—but in
order to get to that promise, we need to get started.

What This Guide Is Not

You’ll find a bevy of other IoT primers on the websites of technology
vendors, standards groups, and industry consortiums, many of
them extremely insightful, but all slightly biased towards either a
technology or philosophical premise about how the IoT should
work. There isn’t anything wrong with these sources, and you are
encouraged to check out what they have to say, but the goal of this
guide is to provide you with the real-world tools and patterns that
are in use, or on the near-term horizon, based on practical hands-on
experience in hundreds of IoT solutions over the last decade. This
guide is about what works for the IoT today and what the considera‐
tions are for implementing something right now.

A Technologist’s Definition of the IoT

In 1999, Kevin Ashton of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) coined the term Internet of Things. At the time, industrial
automation technologies were starting to move from the factory into
new environments like hospitals, banks, and offices. This early form
of intercommunication often involved machines of the same type—
such as a one ATM machine talking to another in the same general
location—hence the term, Machine-to-Machine, or M2M. As early
M2M implementations grew increasingly more sophisticated,
machines were connected to other kinds of devices like servers.

2 | Chapter 1: Introduction
Those servers ultimately moved from on-premise locations into data
centers and eventually “the cloud.”
We can appreciate the prescience of Kevin Ashton’s term. Yet while
the “IoT” is a catchy phrase, it doesn’t help us understand the full
implications of this new paradigm. While the Internet is, of course a
critical, enabling element, it is only a part of the essential concept—
the idea that we can connect our reality, part and parcel, to the vir‐
tual world of information systems—that is so truly transformational
for smart connected products and operations alike.
Today, the Internet of Things can include industrial and commercial
products, everyday products like dishwashers and thermostats, and
local networks of sensors to monitor farms and cities. In an IoT sol‐
ution, objects can be sensed and controlled through the Internet,
whether these objects are remote devices, smart products, or sensors
that represent the status of a physical location. And information can
be made available to applications, data warehouses, and business
systems.

Guide Outline
For some developers, the IoT may seem like a mishmash of technol‐
ogies arranged in a bewildering set of combinations. It’s true that
this is an area where embedded computing, MEMs, broadband and
mobile networking, distributed cloud computing, advanced dis‐
tributed database architectures, cutting-edge web and mobile user
interfaces, and deep enterprise integrations all converge. But thank‐
fully there are some clean layers that we can use to inform our men‐
tal model of IoT solutions.
Our guide is divided into four chapters:
Chapter 2, Solution Patterns for the Internet of Things
As we tackle other topics in the Internet of Things, it is helpful
to think about recurring architectural patterns—in smart, con‐
nected products versus smart, connected operations, new and
innovative experiences, and so on. The first section of the guide
gives you a mental framework to think about your solution.
Chapter 3, The Edge of the IoT
The edge of the IoT is where all the “Things” reside: from sen‐
sors to vehicles, everyday products to entirely new kinds of

Building the Internet of Things | 3

 gadgets. Our focus in this section is on how we will connect,
secure, and interact with things from the cloud.
Chapter 4, The Cloud
The cloud, of course, is a critical component of any IoT solu‐
tion. This section of the guide outlines the key cloud technolo‐
gies, design goals, and implementation details associated with
IoT.
Chapter 5, IoT Applications
All our hard work in connecting the edge to the cloud would be
for naught if we didn’t surface information about these “Things”
through software applications. This part of the guide covers
ways to get your applications to market or into the hands of
your business quickly and effectively.
For technologists, the IoT has the potential to be most rewarding; it’s
where hardware, software, and networks bring new solutions to life,
bridging the physical and digital worlds.

Acknowledgments
This book would not have been possible without the contributions of
Linda Frembes, and the O’Reilly editorial team, especially Susan Conant
and Jeff Bleiel. Thank you for all your work.

4 | Chapter 1: Introduction
 CHAPTER 2
Solution Patterns for the
Internet of Things

How do we move from our disconnected world to a new, connected

one where the boundaries between complex hardware and software
systems are blurring? The Internet of Things presents us with design
challenges at all system levels—from overall architecture to device
connectivity, from data security to user interaction—and in the
search for solutions, it’s all too easy to get lost in the forest of stand‐
ards, technology options, and product capabilities.

Design Patterns and the IoT

While popular industry verticals like connected health and the con‐
nected home do not map cleanly to implementation approaches,
there is another way of subdividing the space. We can map architec‐
tural patterns (spanning industry verticals) by examining existing,
real-world IoT implementations irrespective of the hardware and
software tools used. Let’s identify those—in the spirit of the Gang-

5
of-Four1 and Christopher Alexander’s Design Patterns2—and use
that understanding to help us place technical capabilities in the
proper solution context. Throughout this book, as we tackle other
topics related to the Internet of Things, we can use this initial solu‐
tion pattern language to build a mental framework that supports
other important details.

Pattern Elements
For our general IoT solution patterns, we’ll want some consistent
characteristics with which to evaluate advantages and disadvantages,
and compare and contrast between them. The five elements listed
below help us, as technologists, extract the initial patterns and then
analyze real scenarios:
Solution creator
Who designs, engineers, and builds this IoT solution?
Audience
Who buys the solution, and who will use it?
Position in the product/service lifecycle
Is the solution positioned as a product or service that is an end-
to-itself or does it enhance or augment an existing, mature
product or service?
Connection
How does the solution connect to the Internet?
Integration
Does the solution require integration with other business or
enterprise systems?
Armed with these characteristics for evaluation, let’s examine three
common, high-level recurring patterns that we see in the real world.

1 The software engineering classic Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented

Software (Addison-Wesley, 1994) describes a variety of solutions to common software
design problems. The book’s authors, Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson,
and John Vlissides, are often referred to as the “Gang of Four.”
2 Noted Austrian architect Christopher Alexander’s book, A Pattern Language: Towns,
Buildings, Construction (Oxford University Press, 1977), on urban design and commu‐
nity livability, created a pattern language to enable anyone to design and build at any
scale.

6 | Chapter 2: Solution Patterns for the Internet of Things

Of course, with the IoT, there are numerous technical patterns and
subpatterns we can explore, but we’ll start with these broad strokes.

Smart, Connected Products

If you’re in your home or office right now, you’re likely surrounded
by machines that you use on a daily basis: from televisions to LCD
projectors, dishwashers to washing machines, ceiling fans to air con‐
ditioning units. For every one of these products, it’s likely technolo‐
gists are in the process of connecting them to the IoT, if they haven’t
done so already.

The New Product-Consumer Relationship

As the products that we’ve been using for years, perhaps even deca‐
des, become enhanced through connectivity, the nature of the
product-consumer relationship will change in a significant way.
Manufacturers will be able to continually optimize both user and
machine interactions through regular analysis of sensor data. Prod‐
ucts will evolve on an ongoing basis, through their software, and
manufacturers will continue to innovate well after the physical prod‐
uct has shipped. Perhaps most importantly, products will have fea‐
tures and functions resident in the cloud, outside of their physical
footprint.
This shift has major implications for the product development and
manufacturing lifecycle. In the past, when a product line matured—
characterized by wide adoption but minimal sales growth—manu‐
facturers attempted to rejuvenate them by adding more features and
finding new uses and audiences.
With smart, connected products, manufacturers have an opportu‐
nity to continually rejuvenate their lines—not only through regular
updates, but via analysis of usage data returning from these
machines, making dynamic customization on a user level possible.
This data-driven interplay between company and consumer alters
the product lifecycle to more of an ongoing flow, a kind of living
relationship.3

3 Follett, Jonathan, The Future of Product Design. O’Reilly Media, 2015.

Smart, Connected Products | 7

As technologists, we should consider how a company could be
hyper-responsive to users of its products. Smart, connected prod‐
ucts offer great potential for creating ongoing dynamic interaction.
For example, consider the numerous home appliances that can
respond to energy cycles, from washing machines to dryers to dish‐
washers. Variables, such as the speed of agitation and the amount
and temperature of water or air, can be customized based on per‐
sonal usage.

Elements of Smart, Connected Products

Let’s examine the five key elements of smart, connected products.

Solution creator
Product creators of every stripe—from big consumer electronics
firms like Samsung to manufacturers like Deere & Co. to startups
like Rest Devices, who produce the connected Mimo baby monitor
—are looking to differentiate their offerings by giving users more
compelling experiences. Often, this takes the form of features that
are only possible by integrating the product functions with an Inter‐
net connection. Samsung’s connected televisions, for instance, offer
applications and programming that are Internet-based, as well as
software updates to improve performance. Deere & Co., a leader in
agricultural machinery, provides farmers with connected tractors
that can be monitored in the field via their JDLink telematics system
(as in Figure 2-1), and the Mimo baby monitor delivers video, audio,
waking/sleep state, and even respiration information to the parent’s
smartphone anywhere in the world.
Figure 2-2 shows the Mimo IoT ecosystem: the “turtle” sensor talks
to the “lilypad” gateway, which in turn transmits data about the
infant to the cloud and eventually, the iOS or Android application.
In Figure 2-3, you can see the Mimo mobile monitoring application,
which displays infant position and respiration data, among other
factors that parents can access anywhere on their smartphones.

8 | Chapter 2: Solution Patterns for the Internet of Things

Figure 2-1. Monitoring John Deere’s connected tractor in the field
(Illustration courtesy Deere & Co.)

Figure 2-2. The Mimo IoT ecosystem (Illustration courtesy Rest

Devices, Inc.)

Smart, Connected Products | 9

Figure 2-3. The Mimo mobile monitoring application (Photo courtesy
Rest Devices, Inc.)

With connected products, manufacturers can collect and analyze

usage data in order to refine future generations of the product. This
refinement may come in the form of better understanding of failure
modes so the product engineers may create a more reliable product,

10 | Chapter 2: Solution Patterns for the Internet of Things

or proactively schedule maintenance. Or it could mean understand‐
ing which features of the product get the most use, so the product
managers and designers can hone in on what features are working
well and what features are being ignored.

Audience
It’s important to understand who buys and uses the smart, connec‐
ted product. In the long run, the audience will likely adhere to the
same demographics as those who were buying the previous static,
disconnected version. From the manufacturer’s perspective, how‐
ever, it’s critical that the effort expended to design and build that
smart, connected product result in meaningful differentiation and
economic rent in the competitive marketplace.

Position in the product/service lifecycle

Typically, these products serve as augmented versions of their dis‐
connected counterparts, extending the features of the existing prod‐
uct types and categories that we understand today. However, as the
IoT matures, we’ll see products come to market that could not have
been fully realized without an initial set of connected capabilities.

Connection
Since 2012, the trend has been toward manufacturers designing con‐
nectivity directly into their products. Previously, when manufactur‐
ers were interested in connecting their high-value products—so
that, for instance, services teams could remotely troubleshoot and
react to product issues without the need for an engineer on site—
they were forced to retrofit them for the IoT.

Integration
Service monitoring aside, in most instances enterprise and business
system integration for smart connected products is likely to be light‐
weight, if it exists at all. However, from the consumer software side,
mobile applications, web portals, and analytics will be high value
drivers, along with the function of the connected product itself.
Business system integration, however, could become a common
addition to such products, particularly if initial product pilots prove
solution efficacy.

Smart, Connected Products | 11

Smart, Connected Operations
Sometimes the connected “thing” isn’t a single product or device,
but rather an entire operation that can be instrumented and opti‐
mized, with access to real-time system data and control capabilities
from the cloud.
Smart, connected operations differ from the aforementioned prod‐
ucts in that they often require retrofitting existing infrastructure
with the sensors and communication modules that make an IoT sol‐
ution possible. Additionally, system analytics, artificial intelligence
for discovery and autonomous decision-making, and deep business
system integration add a layer of complexity to connected opera‐
tions not necessarily seen with individual products.
Smart, connected operations make a new level of system visibility
and flexibility possible for industries as varied as agriculture, energy,
transportation, and manufacturing. Let’s look at a few examples of
these to further examine the kinds of scenarios and use cases that
make up the smart connected operations pattern.

Agriculture
It should come as no surprise that agricultural operations face envi‐
ronmental conditions that can be highly unpredictable, requiring
ongoing management of potential outcomes. Smart agriculture solu‐
tions track and react to these conditions by monitoring sensors in
the field, managing information from weather and mapping serv‐
ices, and capturing actionable data, helping to spot potential issues
with crops before they happen.
Smart agriculture solutions can also leverage AI technology that
automatically learns from data, discovers patterns, and builds vali‐
dated predictive models. Such predictive analytics can, for example,
solve irrigation strategy challenges by maintaining crops within
ideal soil moisture range, reducing water costs, and even predicting
when water will be needed for irrigation. In this way, smart agricul‐
ture solutions cuts operating costs and increases a farm’s production
yield.

12 | Chapter 2: Solution Patterns for the Internet of Things

Manufacturing
In smart manufacturing, businesses use the IoT to connect assets
within operations and business systems, and provide real-time visi‐
bility for monitoring, control, and optimization. IoT applications
connect and manage a complex set of disparate sensors, devices, and
software solutions into a “system of systems,” monitoring equipment
condition and operating parameters to automatically trigger alerts
and proactively initiate response from maintenance teams as soon as
problems occur.

Cities
Across the United States, from New York to Los Angeles to Boston,
there are a variety of new initiatives to develop smart city services,
using sensor technology and connected public resources—from
street lights to trash bins to roads—to improve the quality of urban
living. Examples of these initiatives range from well-coordinated
transportation services using big data to reduce traffic congestion
and save commuters time and fuel, to public safety and security
services controlling police dispatch, municipal repairs, and even
snow removal.

Energy
Energy companies today face a whole raft of challenges: aging,
patchwork infrastructure, increased regulatory controls, complex
interconnected, interdependent systems—that make efficient, relia‐
ble delivery of energy increasingly difficult. IoT solutions help
enable a smart grid to manage and automate the flow of both energy
and information between utilities and consumers, leveraging a com‐
bination of sensors, smart meters and software controls, and
analytics.

Buildings
Commercial office buildings are increasingly becoming connected
environments that connect HVAC, lighting, security, and safety sys‐
tems with an array of embedded sensors that enable them to
respond to real-time building occupancy and usage scenarios. These
IoT solutions provide connected intelligence and automation to

Smart, Connected Operations | 13

reduce energy costs and increase visibility across building opera‐
tions.

Elements of Smart, Connected Operations

Here are the five key elements of smart, connected operations.

Solution creator
Who is building the smart, connected operation? The answer varies
widely based on the operation in question. A manufacturer may
build a smart factory operation to streamline the production of the
product; a systems integrator may instrument a building or a plant
with sensors; or a city council may contract with multiple parties to
transform their city.

Audience
Typically an enterprise organization—whether it’s a corporation or
public sector agency—will contract with vendors or a systems inte‐
gration firm to build out a smart, connected operation. And while
smart, connected products may be designed and built prospectively,
hoping that the market reacts favorably, smart, connected opera‐
tions typically begin with a specific ROI target and objective in
mind.

Position in the product/service lifecycle

While the operation itself may be something that has been going on
for years or decades, it’s likely that it has not been instrumented for
data collection or remote control. The IoT augments and brings effi‐
ciency to the existing processes in the smart, connected operation.

Connection
To be sure, there are a wide variety of disconnected machines
involved in most operations: factories, for instance, are filled with
presses, riveters, and industrial robots. And while it’s possible that
the manufacturer of this equipment has already made them smart
connected products, it is, more often than not, a required exercise to
retrofit sensors to existing machines or to the environment itself. As
such, it will be typical to find a gateway device communicating with
sensors and/or existing data bus technologies that were already part
of the operation.

14 | Chapter 2: Solution Patterns for the Internet of Things

Integration
With smart, connected operations, there are almost certainly many
other business/enterprise systems with which to integrate. In many
respects, the entire raison d’etre for the smart connected operation is
to inform other critical systems such as enterprise resource planning
(ERP), logistics, or manufacturing execution systems.

New and Innovative Experiences

Thanks to the confluence of cheap microprocessors, ubiquitous
WiFi, fast cellular connections, and shrinking devices, the IoT has
the potential to create entirely new categories of product and serv‐
ices that will challenge our expectations. In some cases, these inno‐
vative experiences may even disrupt the marketplace, displacing
older technologies entirely. Regardless, innovative experiences, as an
IoT design pattern, represent a mash-up of hardware and services
that generate new value beyond that of the speed, convenience, and
optimization that connected products and operations can provide.

Wearables
Wearables, such as smart watches and fitness bands, are excellent
examples of products that typify this kind of innovation. The tradi‐
tional experience of wearing a watch is being transformed entirely
by a combination of sensors, connectivity, data aggregation, and
analysis. The wearable wrapped around your wrist can track your
steps, monitor your stress level, and even let your husband, wife, or
significant other know if you’ve gotten lost in the wilderness during
a long trail run.
In the near future, it’s conceivable that data obtained from a weara‐
ble could be streamed to your health care provider, your personal
trainer, and maybe even your boss, operating without any interven‐
tion from you, the user. And, as wearables further shrink in size and
increase in availability, they’ll be used to track employees at work,
children at play, and even the elderly in assisted living.
For instance, the FitBit Surge (Figure 2-4) provides distance, time,
and heart rate data to the user in addition to a host of other factors.

New and Innovative Experiences | 15

Figure 2-4. The FitBit Surge tracks everything from exercise type to
sleep stage (Photo courtesy FitBit)

Connected Environments for Work, Play, and Health

The smart, connected home will open up new markets for entertain‐
ment, collaboration, security, and even health monitoring, as audio-
visual equipment, lighting, and climate control systems combine
with sensors, medical devices, and communication tools.
Technologists have already demonstrated that they can make cool
sensors you’ll wear on your body. Soon, they’ll design new products
to capture your data beautifully and invisibly. Consider your future
bathroom, connected to the IoT and awash in invisible sensors that
snag your physiological data—weight, heart rate, blood flow, even
urinalysis, all recorded automatically. If you think that’s crazy, con‐
sider that Withings, for example, is already connecting a scale
(Figure 2-5), heart monitor, and other diagnostics to the IoT.

16 | Chapter 2: Solution Patterns for the Internet of Things

Figure 2-5. The Withings Smart Body Analyzer and mobile app (Photo
courtesy Withings)

This is where machine learning, big data, and design merge with the
IoT. And your bathroom will be transformed into a healthroom,4 as
pictured in Figure 2-6, outfitted with a panoply of noninvasive diag‐
nostics for the early detection of chronic diseases. Talk about disrup‐
tion!

4 Follett, Jonathan, Designing for Emerging Technologies. O’Reilly Media, 2014.

New and Innovative Experiences | 17

Figure 2-6. The connected bathroom as healthroom (Design by Juhan
Sonin, illustration by Quentin Stipp, courtesy of Involution Studios)

Elements of Innovative Experiences

Let’s break down the elements of new and innovative experiences.

Solution creator
The innovators creating these experiences will run the gamut from
big technology players such as Apple with the Apple Watch, to start-
ups such as AdhereTech (the creator of the smart pill bottle for med‐
ication adherence, shown in Figure 2-7), who have the potential to
become market leaders of the future. Large companies, however,
with their set infrastructure and focus on existing products, may
find it more difficult to innovate than smaller, more nimble compet‐
itors who are not beholden to the past.

18 | Chapter 2: Solution Patterns for the Internet of Things

Figure 2-7. The smart pill bottle from AdhereTech (Photo courtesy
AdhereTech)

Audience
While innovative experiences can often be the result of unexpected
opportunities that are difficult to predict, inefficient, capital-
intensive markets and industries are prime targets. The health care
industry, for example is primed for disruption, and the retiring
Boomer generation is a major audience with increasing health needs
—a huge opportunity for the AdhereTech smart pill bottle or con‐
nected healthroom.

Position in the product/service lifecycle

These IoT innovations are entirely new and stand alone, challenging
our expectations of what connected products and services can do for
us. In the product/service lifecycle, they are at the earliest, introduc‐
tion phase. For this reason, we can expect that recyclability and
designing for reuse will be important factors. As technologists, we
must ensure that IoT innovations that do not succeed in the market‐
place avoid becoming landfill.

New and Innovative Experiences | 19

Connection
Disruptive experiences could connect to Internet directly or through
a gateway. But, given the time to market for developing a brand new
product from scratch, it will be common to see new ways of doing
old things in existing environments by bringing in retrofit gear.

Integration
Are there many other business or enterprise systems to integrate
with? Perhaps, but an innovative experience could also be some‐
thing so paradigm-shifting that it stands on its own.

20 | Chapter 2: Solution Patterns for the Internet of Things

 CHAPTER 3
The Edge of the IoT

The edge of the IoT is where the action is. It includes a wide array of
sensors, actuators, and devices—those system end-points that inter‐
act with and communicate real-time data from smart products and
services.
By 2020, it’s projected there will be anywhere from 25 to 50 billion1
Things2 connected to the IoT—that’s up to seven connected Things
for every person on planet Earth. On our way to this milestone, we
can anticipate that these billions of connected objects will generate
data volume far in excess of what can easily be processed and ana‐
lyzed in the cloud, due to issues like limited bandwidth and network
latency (among others).

Living on the Edge

Edge computing or fog computing—a paradigm championed by some
of the biggest IoT technology players, including Cisco, IBM, and
Dell—represents a shift in architecture in which intelligence is
pushed from the cloud to the edge, localizing certain kinds of analy‐
sis and decision-making. Edge computing enables quicker response

1 “Gartner Says 4.9 Billion Connected ‘Things’ Will Be in Use in 2015; In 2020, 25 Billion
Connected ‘Things’ Will Be in Use.” http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2905717,
accessed Mar. 24, 2016.
2 “Cisco Global Cloud Index: Forecast and Methodology, 2014–2019.” http://bit.ly/
25wqkDN, accessed Mar. 24, 2016.

21
times, unencumbered by network latency, as well as reduced traffic,
selectively relaying the appropriate data to the cloud.
Regardless of whether system intelligence is ultimately located in the
cloud or the fog or some hybrid of the two, development for the
Internet of Things requires technologists to have a clear understand‐
ing of edge architecture and how information is both gathered from
devices and communicated.

An Abstract Edge Architecture Model

While specific solutions—from smart homes to smart grids to smart
factories—may have their own unique variations, for the purpose of
discussion, let’s abstract a basic edge architecture that describes the
key elements.
The foundation of our stack, pictured in Figure 3-1, is the “Thing,”
that critical product or environment that is the core reason for our
IoT system build.
In the next layer, sensors and actuators provide the Thing’s “read and
write” capabilities. These sensing and actuating components may
either be built into the smart product or environment, or, in the case
of a retrofit, they could be added after the fact.

22 | Chapter 3: The Edge of the IoT

Figure 3-1. An IoT “Thing” anatomy describing the key elements resi‐
dent in an edge device

Sensors
Sensors read and report on the real-world status of connected prod‐
ucts, machines, and local environments. They are the eyes and ears
of the system, monitoring environmental elements like temperature,
light, and moisture. Ongoing sensor innovation, an often-
overlooked area of IoT technology, will be critical for evolving and
improving solutions.
While we might think of sensors only as physical objects, anything
that can be read—from files to product-specific data—can and
should be considered sensor input. For example, a piece of indus‐
trial equipment may have hundreds of data points unique to that
product, and every one of them could be considered a sensor.

Living on the Edge | 23

Sensors may be physically hardwired, built into the product, or
communicate via a short-haul communication protocol like Blue‐
tooth Low Energy (LE) or ZigBee.
Examples of sensors include:

• Temperature sensors
• Light sensors
• Moisture sensors
• GPS receivers
• Vehicle on-board diagnostics
• Files
• Product-specific data

For instance, the Grove water flow sensor, shown in Figure 3-2, is
part of Seeed Studio’s hardware innovation platform for technolo‐
gists to take new ideas from prototype to production. It reads liquid
flow rate using a water rotor, whose speed changes depending on
how fast the water is moving. The signal output comes from a Hall
effect sensor, which pulses as the rotor turns.

Figure 3-2. The Grove water flow sensor (Photo courtesy Seeed Devel‐
opment Limited)

24 | Chapter 3: The Edge of the IoT

Actuators
Actuators affect the electromechanical or logical state of a product
or environment. They are the system’s hands and feet. Actuators
might include a light that can be turned on and off, or a valve that
can be opened and closed.
System commands sent to embedded applications—such as remote
reboot, configuration updates, and firmware distribution—should
also be considered actuation because, by changing its software, the
system is in fact changing the physical reality of a product.
Examples of actuators include:

• Lights
• Valves
• Motors
• Commands (“soft” actions, file distribution, firmware updates)

For instance, the 6000 series indexing valve from K-Rain, pictured
in Figure 3-3, is a robust distribution valve that can be used for
high-flow city water, irrigation, and even wastewater applications.
The valve acts as a manifold, directing the flow of water from zone
to zone, and can be coupled in an IoT solution with an intelligent
valve monitor to ensure even water distribution and alert operators
to potential malfunctions.

Living on the Edge | 25

Figure 3-3. Indexing valve (Photo courtesy K-Rain)

Controller
The next layer in our stack is the controller, a hardware or software
component that interacts electrically or logically with sensors and
actuators. It is in the controller that we’ll find our low-level, short-
haul communication.
While in many instances the controller may be fused within other
elements of the stack, it is always present logically. For example, a
controller may be a simple circuit that reads an analog signal from a
temperature sensor and digitizes the signal into discrete transmis‐
sions that the upper layers of the stack can understand.
Over short distances, local communication from sensors can come
via a simple serial connection between devices, or short-haul wire‐
less technologies like ZigBee. Industries may define standard proto‐
cols for interfacing with equipment—for example, OBD-II for
automobiles, or DEX and MDB for vending machines. All of these
represent short-haul protocols, because they are meant for local
communication between sensors, control systems, and an agent.

26 | Chapter 3: The Edge of the IoT

Agent
The next layer in the stack is the agent, an embedded program that
runs on or near the IoT device and reports the status of an asset or
environment. The agent acts as a bridge between the controller and
the cloud, deciding what data to send and when to send it. This pro‐
cess operates in reverse as well, as the agent processes and responds
to cloud-based commands and updates.
As an example of the controller and agent working in concert, imag‐
ine that we’re engineering a proof-of-concept device for an IoT sys‐
tem using a Raspberry Pi and an Arduino with a breadboard. The
Arduino is the controller running LEDs and servos, and acquiring
data from a sensor. The Raspberry Pi is interfacing with the Ardu‐
ino, and running a software agent that decides when to send the sen‐
sor data to the cloud, via a long-haul connection to WiFi / Ethernet.

Long-haul communication
On the top layer of our architecture, we find our long-haul commu‐
nication to the Internet. IoT solutions invariably require that envi‐
ronment or device status be made available to a cloud-based
application for consumption by a variety of stakeholders. Once an
agent has received information via short-haul, it must retransmit
that information to the cloud. The desired characteristics of these
long-haul protocols are much different than short-haul, particularly
in the categories of security, footprint, and reliability. There are a
wide variety of long-haul options for IoT solutions, dependent on
the use case; they include cellular and satellite, WiFi and wired
Ethernet, as well as subgigahertz options like LoRa and SigFox.
Networking protocols for long-haul communication are similarly
diverse; they include TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and
UDP (User Datagram Protocol) for the transport layer, and HTTP
(Hypertext Transfer Protocol) and CoAP (Constrained Application
Protocol) for the application layer, among many others.

Living on the Edge | 27

Device Types
To further our understanding of how the edge of the IoT works, let’s
look at some typical examples of the key hardware components that
make up our devices. While it’s true there can be an overwhelmingly
wide variety from which to choose, the basic component types—
from modules to microcontrollers—provide us with concrete exam‐
ples of the elements required for edge connectivity and logic. The
examples that follow are largely focused on cellular technology,
although devices using WiFi, wired Ethernet, etc., for connectivity
are also considered.

Modules
Communication modules are components for connecting to WiFi,
cellular, or long-range wireless networks. While modules typically
have little to no programmability, vendors do provide a variety of
configurable options and even lightweight scripting.
Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and custom solution
providers building IoT capabilities directly into their products often
incorporate communication modules into a custom board design.
For instance, the AirPrime MC Series communication module from
Sirerra Wireless, pictured in Figure 3-4, is incorporated into both
connected consumer electronics, as well as industrial grade solu‐
tions like Itron’s OpenWay Smart Grid.

Figure 3-4. AirPrime MC Series communication module (Photo cour‐

tesy Sierra Wireless)

28 | Chapter 3: The Edge of the IoT

Vendors that build modems and routers also use modules in their
products. However, because manufacturers don’t pre-certify com‐
munication modules, any custom products incorporating the mod‐
ule must be certified by the carrier prior to usage.

SoCs and microcontrollers

For building connectivity and logic into your IoT product, you’ll
need a microcontroller like the CC3200 from Texas Instruments, pic‐
tured in Figure 3-5, or a system on a chip (SoC) like Qualcomm’s
Snapdragon processor (designed originally for mobile computing
but now able to be embedded just about everywhere).

Figure 3-5. The CC3200 microcontroller (Photo courtesy Texas Instru‐

ments)

While both SoCs and microcontrollers are integrated circuits that

include many of the components of a complete computer, SoCs typi‐
cally have greater amounts of RAM and more powerful processors.
As a result, SoCs are capable of running robust operating systems
such as Linux or Windows and more complex software. Microcon‐
trollers and SoCs are used in a wide variety of IoT applications, from
wearables to connected cars, among others.

Modems and routers

At its core, a modem is essentially a communication module on a
board, enclosed in a physical housing, with a serial connection to
plug into a computer. Since modems are pre-certified by the manu‐
facturer, they can be used right away after purchase, as long they’re
on a carrier’s certified list. In scenarios where PCs are already con‐
trolling high-value units—industrial machines in factories or large
medical devices in hospitals—modems can be the right fit for
adding connectivity.
Routers are similar to modems. However, instead of a single serial
connection to one PC, routers allow for multiple computers to share

Living on the Edge | 29

a cellular data connection. A router can also initiate the connection
to the cellular network itself, as opposed to a modem, which needs
to be explicitly controlled by the serial-connected PC.
For instance, Cisco’s Connected Grid Router, shown in Figure 3-6,
built specifically for IoT applications like smart cities and smart
grids, can be installed outdoors to support sensor networks.

Figure 3-6. The Cisco Connected Grid Router (Photo courtesy Cisco)

30 | Chapter 3: The Edge of the IoT

Gateways
Gateways from companies like Dell, Intel, Multi-Tech, and others
are essentially small form factor computers. They have built-in con‐
nectivity (WiFi or cellular), capable CPU architectures, and plenty
of memory, running full-featured operating systems such as Win‐
dows or Linux. Figure 3-7 shows Dell’s Edge Gateway 5000.

Figure 3-7. Dell Edge Gateway 5000 Series (Photo courtesy Dell)

Gateways are great for retrofitting unconnected Things, enabling the

connectivity of industrial devices and other systems to the IoT.
Gateways provide a place to put your IoT agent code and often
include an SDK to make the coding and deploying of an agent
straightforward. They connect legacy and new systems, and enable
data flow between edge devices and the cloud.

Living on the Edge | 31

Trackers
A tracking unit is an excellent example of a fixed-purpose, machine-
to-machine device engineered to perform a specific set of functions
for a vertical market. Trackers, like the CalAmp LMU 3030 pictured
in Figure 3-8, can track vehicle speed and location as well as access
vehicle diagnostic data. They’re useful for fleet tracking, car rental
driver monitoring, and other automotive applications.

Figure 3-8. CalAmp LMU 3030 (Photo courtesy CalAmp)

Trackers are essentially modems coupled with a CPU. As such, they

have built-in connectivity, GPS, and advanced configurability to dic‐
tate behavior. Trackers have built-in agents, as well as their own
long-haul protocols.

Prototyping boards
This list of edge components would not be complete without a dis‐
cussion of prototyping boards and their impact on ideation and
design for the IoT.
Prototyping boards such as the Arduino Uno (shown in Figure 3-9),
Intel Galileo (shown in Figure 3-10), and Raspberry Pi are ideal for
proof-of-concept work. They have just about everything a designer
or engineer needs to start creating for the Internet of Things:
Connectivity
A prototyping board comes equipped with a wireless module or
an Ethernet chip and RJ-45 port to connect to the wired
Internet.

32 | Chapter 3: The Edge of the IoT

Application development stack
Prototyping boards have a way to load code, whether it be
Arduino Sketch, Java, or a C programming language.
Expandability
You can easily add breadboards, expansion boards, and sensors
to prototyping boards.

Figure 3-9. The Arduino Uno is used to quickly prototype IoT solutions
(Photo courtesy Arduino)

Living on the Edge | 33

Figure 3-10. Intel’s Galileo is based on the x86 architecture and sup‐
ports Arduino hardware expansion cards and software libraries (Photo
courtesy Intel)

While it’s commonplace for IoT product companies to use prototyp‐

ing boards to test out new ideas, these boards usually are not appro‐
priate for deployment scale usage from a cost standpoint. When
manufacturing a high-volume production run of a product, product
engineers and designers will necessarily be concerned with the keep‐
ing the bill of materials (BoM) in check. To conserve costs, it’s often
necessary to alter the prototype design for a production build, toss‐
ing out the parts of the board that are not actually being used.
For example, if the prototyping board has a powerful CPU with a 1.1
Ghz processor, but the product really only requires a 400 Mhz pro‐
cessor, appropriately specifying a less powerful processor will posi‐
tively affect the bottom line. In these cases, finding the right
prototyping board vendor to help you transition from the prototype
stage to production can be critical.
In the end, it’s unlikely that your dishwasher will be connected to the
IoT by a Raspberry Pi inside of it. However, it’s quite likely that the
dishwasher manufacturer may embark on its IoT journey by creat‐
ing a proof-of-concept with a Raspberry Pi.

34 | Chapter 3: The Edge of the IoT

Edge Architecture Examples
To make our abstract edge architecture a little more real, let’s com‐
pare and contrast two different solutions, one using an embedded
agent with WiFi for long-haul communication, and another using a
gateway with cellular connectivity.
For this exercise, we’ll use a common, but surprisingly transforma‐
tive IoT solution: the smart, connected vending machine. This
example typifies the potential of the IoT to provide real business
value to industries that might seem unadventurous from a techno‐
logical perspective.
From inventory management to better provide customers with pop‐
ular food options, to remote diagnosis and repair to maintain the
machines, to power consumption and temperature monitoring for
increased energy savings, the connected vending machine provides
a great example of how the IoT can bring business transformation
through data transparency.
The connected vending machine solutions pictured in Figure 3-11
and Figure 3-12 use the same foundational edge architecture.

Figure 3-11. Embedded agent with WiFi long-haul

Edge Architecture Examples | 35

Figure 3-12. Gateway example with cellular

The sensors and actuators for the vending machine include the inter‐
nal electromechanical units, such as a bill validator for receiving
payment, and motors for manipulating and moving product inven‐
tory.
The controller layer uses the vending industry standard control
busses:
MDB (multi-drop bus)
Allows transactional devices like the aforementioned bill valida‐
tor to communicate with the vending machine’s brain.
DEX (digital exchange)
The means by which the product inventory is tracked.
The agent interfaces with the DEX and MDB control layer to deter‐
mine the amount of products the vending machine has in inventory,
as well as how much money it has collected over the course of the
day. It then relays that data to the cloud.

Real-World Deployment
From this point on, our two example architectures differ. Where the
agent resides and how it connects to the cloud is determined in part
by the topography and nature of the machines’ real-world deploy‐
ment.

36 | Chapter 3: The Edge of the IoT

If the vending machine is located by itself, perhaps in the middle of
a theme park, we’ll need a solution where connectivity can be
embedded directly inside the machine itself, as in Figure 3-11. In
this instance, our agent can be loaded on to a microcontroller and
our long-haul communication handled through the local Wi-Fi net‐
work.
However, in contrast, if there are 10 vending machines co-located in
a single environment, perhaps in a skating rink, it’s unnecessary for
each one to have its own agent and long-haul transport. Instead, all
10 machines can be wired together with one IoT gateway, as depic‐
ted in Figure 3-12. In this case, each vending machine can talk to the
local gateway, where the aggregation logic, other business logic, and
agent logic reside, as well as the long-haul connectivity. In this
example, our agent is loaded onto the gateway and long-haul com‐
munication is handled through cellular.
From these examples, we can see how embedded and gateway archi‐
tectures can be equally valid and have their place, depending on the
real-world circumstances that bound the IoT solution.

Edge Architecture Examples | 37

 CHAPTER 4
The Cloud

The cloud is the central station of any IoT solution, and a critical
component. While it may be tempting to think about the IoT device
cloud as the equivalent of a web or mobile application, the Internet
of Things introduces its own unique characteristics and subsystems.
In this chapter, we’ll examine some of those characteristics, includ‐
ing cloud-device connectivity and security, device ingress and
egress, and data normalization and protocol translation.
In IoT technical diagrams such as Figure 4-1, it’s common to struc‐
ture visualizations of the architecture from the bottom up, reflecting
the mental model of edge devices being “on the ground” relative to
the cloud. Using this diagram, let’s follow the journey of a message
as it flows from the edge to the cloud.

39
Figure 4-1. The device cloud is the central station of an IoT solution,
processing and analyzing data received from the edge

Cloud-to-Device Connectivity
Making sure we get the right message from the edge device to the
cloud is paramount. When it comes to cloud-to-device connectivity,
security is increasingly a major area of concern, and rightly so. Even
a modest-sized IoT installation can provide numerous potential
intrusion points via edge devices that, unlike modern PCs or smart‐
phones, have limited computing resources. This combination of
traffic quantity, device constraints, and the wide variety of IoT solu‐
tion configurations makes for a bevy of challenges.
Device authentication prior to any data transmission is a critical
security measure (Figure 4-2). In a web or enterprise application
there are authenticated users, systems the users are authorized to
access, and roles that designate the users’ privileges. In the IoT, how‐
ever, we see a new kind of actor in the system: the device itself,

40 | Chapter 4: The Cloud

which must supply its own credentials and identity to the cloud.
Device authentication prevents data spoofing and junk data, and
guards against cloud-to-device information flow that could get into
the wrong hands. Since this access point represents a new attack sur‐
face, a device identity and authorization layer is a requirement for
any system. IoT-connected devices also need the benefit of encryp‐
tion standards like Transport Layer Security (TLS) v1.2 and
banking-grade certificate exchange and validation.

Figure 4-2. Device authentication is a critical security measure

In an IoT solution, every product, sensor, gateway, and communica‐

tion device at the edge requires a unique identifier. As you might
expect, there are a variety of techniques for achieving this, which is
why it’s important for the cloud software to be flexible in the way it
identifies a device. Often, you can use the serial number of a product
(stamped-in by the manufacturer) as a unique identifier. However,
it’s not unusual to encounter products that lack a serial number alto‐
gether. If the device has a mobile radio, you can use the mobile
equipment identifier (MEID) or another form of cellular identifier.

Cloud-to-Device Connectivity | 41
Once you’ve chosen an identifier, you’ll need to authenticate to the
cloud. But common techniques in consumer and enterprise systems
to solve this problem fall short when it comes to the IoT. For
instance, in the case of username/password combinations, how do
you update the password of an IoT device at the edge? And what if
there are millions of them? X.509 certificates that identify a client
securely to a communicating server are the best approach. However,
a public key infrastructure (PKI) is needed to produce these certifi‐
cates and sign, distribute, and revoke them when they’ve been chal‐
lenged.

Messaging and the IoT

How do you represent a message in an IoT system? To begin with,
we need our credentials—our device ID card—to be part of the mes‐
sage envelope. The envelope protocol tells the system, “Here’s who I
am. Here’s where I want this message to go. And here are some char‐
acteristics of how I want the message to be delivered.”
When it comes to envelope protocols, there are many emerging
standards, some of them more pertinent for certain industries or
certain types of IoT solutions. MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry
Transport) and CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol) are
strictly envelope protocols. They do not care about the contents—to
them, the message inside is just a bucket of bytes. When describing
the message contents, engineers may use JSON, HTML, CSV, or
even a proprietary binary format. Other protocols such as
AlwaysOn are designed to incorporate both envelope and message
information (Figure 4-3).

42 | Chapter 4: The Cloud

Figure 4-3. While messaging protocols contain identity information for
authentication purposes, most leave the content to another format

Back to the Future: How Reliable Is Your Network?

At the beginning of the Internet revolution in the late ’90s, network
reliability was not a given, and outages were not unusual. Software
engineers could not assume they would have continuous connectiv‐
ity. Over time, improved connectivity and fault-tolerance made
these scenarios less of a concern. However, when it comes to the
Internet of Things, the relatively rudimentary nature of device con‐
nectivity requires adjusting the engineer’s outlook yet again—per‐
haps back to the cautious mindset of the early Internet days.
IoT networks, as you might expect, are generally not as reliable as
today’s mobile or business Internet connections. The IoT does not,
as yet, have the same fault-tolerance built into the client and server
layers that you might expect with consumer-oriented modern web
browsers and smartphone applications. In comparison, IoT edge
devices run on relatively rudimentary operating systems and are
subject to a variety of real-world factors that can limit connectivity.
For example, in a smart, connected operation for commercial vehi‐
cle fleet-deployment and monitoring, a truck might be outfitted
with telematics device, communicating over a cellular network to
provide regular updates regarding location, status, and route. How‐
ever, at any moment, data flow from the vehicle could be compro‐
mised by something as simple as driving into a parking garage or

Cloud-to-Device Connectivity | 43
tunnel. Suddenly, the truck disappears from the network and the
system receives a fragment of a message. The software waits on
those bytes, eating up resources in our cloud networking layer. The
truck may be gone for minutes, hours, or days. We have no way of
knowing. And then, as suddenly as it left, it returns, and the system
receives the rest of the message. This all-too-common scenario
needs to inform the design of IoT systems. Importantly, our soft‐
ware layer needs to understand and compensate for network unreli‐
ability, and not assume that we’ll receive complete messages or have
a well-behaved network client from connected devices.

Device Ingress/Egress
Next, as we move up our IoT cloud stack, is the device ingress and
egress layer. IoT solutions, the majority of the time, are concerned
with device ingress—receiving incoming messages from the edge to
the cloud. The sheer volume of data can challenge the scale of cloud
systems. A system might have hundreds of thousands of connected
devices, each sending multiple messages every minute. For example,
if every device in a 250,000-device system sent just 3 messages per
minute, it would result in over a billion messages per day. By way of
comparison, Twitter, as of this writing, has about 320 million
monthly active users who send about 900 million messages per day.
It’s feasible that the data ingress of just one IoT installation can easily
match or even surpass the total traffic of Twitter on a daily basis.
In contrast, once in a while, an IoT system needs to communicate
with one of the many connected devices. Cloud-to-edge messaging
may include sending notifications about new configurations, firm‐
ware, or commands to trigger actuation. While it’s far more infre‐
quent than device ingress, when you need device egress, it’s
important to have the right communication protocol and communi‐
cation infrastructure in place. Particularly when triggering actua‐
tion, it’s important that users see timely responses to their cloud-
based commands. Perhaps a smartphone user is asking their garage
door to close because they realize they left it open when they exited
the house. From a user experience perspective, if the command is
successful, the end result can seem almost magical—the ability to
instantly and remotely command one of many connected devices.
Of course, some classes of edge devices are not always powered on
or do not maintain a persistent network connection. Duty-cycled

44 | Chapter 4: The Cloud

devices simply connect on their own schedule and receive updates
when reconnection occurs, much like retrieving email from a POP3
email client. The downside with this setup is that you don’t get your
messages exactly when they’re sent. Some IoT frameworks allow for
an active connection from the cloud to the edge, pushing messages
as soon as they’re available. This gives a much crisper interaction for
end users who want to control and update IoT devices. Even though
device egress happens rarely, when it does happen, it needs to work
well.

Data Normalization and Protocol Translation

While industry coalitions are hard at work defining open standards
for interoperability with the IoT, there are many legacy M2M sys‐
tems with thousands of connected devices that currently speak dif‐
ferent proprietary protocols. For this reason, a well-designed IoT
cloud system includes a dedicated protocol translation layer. This
layer translates the “over the wire/air” protocol to the native, or can‐
onical, protocol that’s understood by the upper layers of the system.
Once a message is received, the data needs to be normalized, which
involves extracting information from the device message and
putting it into a data storage schema. As the message comes through
the device ingress layer, you’ll need to parse the JSON, CSV file, or
proprietary format. IoT data is often time series data—discreet val‐
ues with identifiers, like sensor type or status reading, and a time‐
stamp of when that value was ascertained. However, just having time
series-data storage doesn’t completely solve the problem, as there are
also many forms of unstructured data such as log files, diagnostics,
images, and video.

Data Consistency
Message delivery consistency has a significant impact on your IoT
applications. The order in which messages are received and pro‐
cessed makes all the difference.
When scaling the messaging infrastructure for an IoT application,
be wary of dumping messages into a queue and processing them
later. When you start to distribute those queues and distribute your
architecture, it’s very easy to forget to connect the temporal locality
of a single device that sent us a series of messages being processed in
order. For instance, if a device has a status of “door open” and then a

Data Normalization and Protocol Translation | 45

second later “door closed,” what happens if the messages are received
out of order? Now there’s a temporal ordering issue. The system
needs to assert that the first message the device sent is received and
processed by the application before the second message.

Infrastructure
The next layer in our cloud stack is the Infrastructure layer. For
many IoT solution creators, the elastic compute resources of an
Infrastrucure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider are a sensible alternative
to the substantial initial investment and ongoing maintenance cost
of constructing their own data centers. Infrastructure-as-a-Service,
whether public or a managed private cloud from an IaaS vendor, can
give solution creators the ability to automatically provision new
compute, storage, and network resources on demand. This is partic‐
ularly useful for IoT solutions that may have significantly large but
temporary workloads. For example, within the annual lifecycle of an
IoT system, there are certain events that demand more compute and
bandwidth resources than others—for instance, a firmware update
deployed to a million devices, or the seasonal launch of a new prod‐
uct. IaaS resources are convenient and scalable: the third-party ven‐
dor owns all compute resources, storage, and networking
capabilities, and handles all system maintenance.

How Much Data Is Too Much Data?

Collecting trillions of data points demands a well-thought-out strat‐
egy in order to set automated policies for data retention and “data
governance.” IoT data can be big, fast, unstructured, and write-
heavy. When the data is pouring in, it might seem like you’re collect‐
ing and storing information that’s just meaningless noise. And it’s
true that some classes of IoT applications rarely read data values a
second time once they’ve been written. In cases like this, some
would argue the data isn’t going to do any good, because no one will
ever look at it. In those situations, it’s a question whether to store the
data at all.
But we do, indeed, want to store it. The useless data “noise” of today
might well be the most impactful information of tomorrow. With
the help of a machine learning algorithm, you may find that some of
your data is in fact a signal that something is about to go wrong, giv‐
ing you non-intuitive insight into your IoT system.

46 | Chapter 4: The Cloud

Even if you don’t have the machine learning implementation and
algorithms to process it today, don’t throw these data points away,
because training those future machine learning models with histori‐
cal data can be absolutely critical.

The Value of Small Data

With all this discussion of big data, it’s worth keeping in mind the
great value that you can get from small data generated by an IoT
installation. There are many use cases where simply knowing the
location and status of a piece of equipment on a daily basis can pro‐
vide tremendous value. For instance, if you’ve leased a piece of con‐
struction equipment to a customer who’s required to keep it in
Massachusetts, perhaps once a day you’ll want to know that your
equipment remains in the right area. You don’t need to hear from it
every second, or need big data from it. You just need to know where
it is. In scenarios such as this, small data can be very useful.

APIs
The final layer in our IoT cloud device stack is the API, the lingua
franca of modern systems. The majority of API usage occurs at the
application layer, which is discussed in more detail in Chapter 5;
however, there are a few notable elements we should discuss here. In
particular, the device cloud stack should provide lower-level access
to insulate the application layer from the devices. Common API
functions may include:

• Provisioning a new device

• Querying data elements supplied by a device
• Sending commands to devices

The Topology of the Cloud

The tremendous power and potential of the Internet of Things
comes from the fact that it binds digital resources to the physical
world and vice versa. However, while the cloud is an excellent meta‐
phor that helps us to discuss abstract and complex concepts about
servers, networks, and data centers, we must always be cognizant of

APIs | 47
the physical nature of the Internet of Things and the resulting chal‐
lenges and limitations that brings.
For example, the physical location of cloud assets such as data cen‐
ters can be critical in an IoT system. It’s an all-too-common scenario
to have data generated by devices in one region that cannot leave a
certain geographic area for reasons of network latency, governmen‐
tal controls, or even industry regulations. As a case in point, it’s not
acceptable for medical device data generated in Central Europe to be
transmitted just anywhere in the cloud. The European authorities
will tell you the data cannot transgress European boundaries. In sit‐
uations like these, your abstraction of the cloud needs to be both
regionally and locally aware.
Importantly, as we’ve discussed in previous chapters, digital mes‐
sages are not immune from the inconvenient realities of the physical
world. Cloud processing is far from instantaneous, subject to
unforeseen delays and network unreliability.
The concept of fog or edge computing attempts to transcend some
of these physical limitations. According to Cisco’s “Fog Computing
and the Internet of Things: Extend the Cloud to Where the Things
Are”:
The Internet of Things (IoT) is generating an unprecedented vol‐
ume and variety of data. But by the time the data makes its way to
the cloud for analysis, the opportunity to act on it might be gone.
For example, when you have an edge device that needs to communi‐
cate with another entity—an application, business process, or even
the device right next to it—it must first send that message to the
cloud, which processes the information and transmits a response
back down to the edge. Communication with the cloud could very
well mean sending a data transmission thousands of miles away over
a network with questionable reliability. In contrast, with fog com‐
puting, that processing happens on nodes physically closer to where
the data is originally collected.
According to Cisco, fog computing provides intelligent infrastruc‐
ture at or closer to the edge that:

48 | Chapter 4: The Cloud

 • Analyzes the most time-sensitive data at the network edge,
close to where it is generated instead of sending vast amounts
of IoT data to the cloud.
• Acts on IoT data in milliseconds, based on policy.
• Sends selected data to the cloud for historical analysis and
longer-term storage.

Flexible cloud topology like this can be a requirement in environ‐

ments like hospitals, where there’s a mission-critical need to quickly
analyze real-time data from connected devices and initiate immedi‐
ate action. In this kind of scenario, you’ll want a multi-tiered
approach to data collection and analysis, starting with a smart gate‐
way or an IoT server to apply localized intelligence, aggregation, and
business rules before communicating up to the next level. At the sec‐
ond tier, you might have a regional instance to aggregate big data,
applying business rules and logic that spans local regions. Lastly,
you’ll have a fully distributed master system capable of seeing the
complete picture, while collecting some trimmed down data for the
purposes of analytics. The variety of IoT systems and the need for
flexible solutions that respond to real-time events quickly make fog
computing a compelling option.

The Topology of the Cloud | 49

 CHAPTER 5
IoT Applications

Over the next few years, as the Internet of Things brings billions of
new connected devices into the world, there is tremendous potential
to unlock previously hidden insight into physical processes for both
businesses and consumers. However, to access the value of all these
new connected things, we require a host of new software applica‐
tions that can make sense of the constant data flow.
Through embedded sensors and intelligence, we can give nerves to
products, services, and operations. Now we need to think about how
we’re going to process the signals from our newfound senses. We
certainly can’t look at every bit of data these systems generate: infor‐
mation overload is already a substantial problem. Well-designed
software and predictive analytics help us make some of those deter‐
minations, but we still must decide what machine and digital ele‐
ments will make up the autonomic nervous system of our IoT
solutions, and conversely, what will make up the somatic nervous
system, requiring human intervention for critical decision-making.
Creating applications that derive value from the IoT involves much
more than generating a user interface on a web or mobile device.
While it’s true that some IoT software may take the form of an app
that gives a user a new experience on a smart, connected product, it
could also consist of a prediction from an analytics model derived
through machine learning and assimilated after an examination of
multitudes of data, or it could mean the integration of a data feed
from a connected operation into another business system.

51
IoT application design begins by establishing a model of the connec‐
ted device and the worlds—both physical and digital—into which
the device fits. This model enables the APIs, user interfaces, enter‐
prise integrations, and analytics to access a common solution frame‐
work, even in the face of changing underlying technology. To
effectively design and develop IoT applications, we need to model
the specific problem domain, apply business logic, and surface that
information to users.
In this chapter, we explore some of the considerations for IoT appli‐
cation architecture, as well as principles of good application design.

A Collaborative Process
IoT application design and development is a collaborative process
that could involve a wide variety of people—from domain experts
and technologists to system designers and developers—all of whom
have unique skills and responsibilities. For example, the domain
expert possesses a deep understanding of the application subject
matter, the system entities, and the relationships between them. She
is responsible for the language of the application domain. The tech‐
nologist/system designer is responsible for understanding and
defining the application structure, and the developer is responsible
for coding the application.
While each person has a specific assignment, it’s important for
everyone on the application team to collaborate across disciplines
and understand the fundamentals of how the total system works.
This knowledge is critical for identifying the constraints that govern
an IoT solution, and ultimately providing a better experience for
the user. For example, understanding the reasons why the network
is unreliable gives the proper context for potentially faulty informa‐
tion flow that can up-end a user experience.1

The Semantic Model

The IoT connects the digital and physical worlds so that smart devi‐
ces and operations can provide feedback to users via a digital repre‐

1 For a complete discussion of these considerations, it’s worth having a look at Designing
Connected Products: UX for the Consumer Internet of Things, by Claire Rowland, Eliza‐
beth Goodwin, Martin Charlier, Ann Light, and Alfred Lui. O’Reilly Media, 2015.

52 | Chapter 5: IoT Applications

sentation. When embarking on your software design, you should
first ask, “What item am I connecting to, and how do I represent it
digitally?” The answer to these questions varies wildly, depending
on whether you’re modeling a smart product or a more complex sys‐
tem such as a smart building, or even a smart city.
A semantic model is a good way to build a bridge between the physi‐
cal thing and its “digital twin” so a user can understand the relation‐
ship. It gives a person a way to make sense of the physical device or
operation that may be located at a great distance. Think of the
semantic model as similar to an API, an application program inter‐
face for the object or system. It’s a useful exercise to consider your
connected product or environment as having routines and proto‐
cols. Ask yourself, “How do I want users to think about and work
with this digital representation in the cloud?” The API of your con‐
nected device or operation defines the properties and services you
want to expose to your application developers. Questions to con‐
sider include:
Properties
What are the properties I want to expose? In the semantic
model for a product such as a connected tractor, for example,
these properties could consist of critical operational metrics like
fuel capacity and usage, engine temperature, ground tempera‐
ture, location (latitude and longitude), engine runtime, last oil
change, oil level, fuel level, and engine RPM.
Services
What are the services that my IoT device supplies? In our con‐
nected tractor example, users might need to get diagnostics and
maintenance entries, and possibly even shut down the machine
remotely.
Events
What events does my device emit? The connected tractor might
indicate that it’s time for maintenance or send a fault code if
there’s a malfunction.
Ultimately, the people informed by your IoT solution are not going
to be interacting directly with connected devices and services, but
with the information through this shared model. The semantic
model bridges the human brain and the connected device or system
so we can deliver applications and user experiences that create value,
spark insight, and enable useful action.

The Semantic Model | 53

Software UX Design Considerations
How do we consume data from the IoT effectively in a world already
saturated with information? At their best, applications for the Inter‐
net of Things convey insights to decision makers and even automate
responses, saving time and money by creating process efficiencies
and improving system performance. At their worst, IoT apps can
become glorified dashboards stacked with widgets and UI cruft,
delivering nothing more than information overload. UX design in
this area is fraught with bad metaphors (computer software for
smart operations, for instance, should not at all resemble an aircraft
cockpit) and misguided best practices (such as designing your soft‐
ware for the newbie rather than for the repeat user).
The purpose of your IoT application is to answer fundamental ques‐
tions about your smart product or operation and allow users (or
machines) to make immediate, informed decisions in response to
the data. The time-to-decision matters. A well-designed application
alerts users to problems when something goes wrong, and provides
them with the right information to make decisions that have impact.
With many possible user types, from consumers to operations man‐
agers, system administrators to domain specialists, no two IoT solu‐
tions are ever the same, and one size never fits all. The key to
designing an effective application lies in understanding both the
needs of the user consuming the information, and the fundamental
needs of the business, including the overall goals, decision require‐
ments, and workflow.
What follows are some design tenets for balancing complexity, aes‐
thetics, and information design in IoT applications—the design con‐
siderations, trade-offs, and other issues that you should work
through as you create your software.

The Right Design

What’s the data story of your intelligent operation or smart product?
The system is a living organism, and we’re measuring its health: its
unique strengths, capabilities, and metrics. For your IoT application,
you may require an appropriate visual representation of the man‐
agement layer, as well as easy ways to understand and drill down to
the data level required to make effective decisions.

54 | Chapter 5: IoT Applications

Gather the right data
Oftentimes, easily accessible data is displayed in user interfaces
rather than the data that’s truly important to operational staff. Using
a business and user-centric development approach coupled with
advanced information visualization and aesthetic engineering best
practices significantly upgrades the decision support capability of
your UI. What data and metrics do the users really need to see?
What context does each metric require to make it meaningful? Do
users need to see the trend, the breakdown by region, or target?

Provide the right data display

Detailed information should be easily accessible within the same
interface. The user should be able to understand cause and effect,
trends, and correlation to key drivers, thereby getting a clear picture
of system status and how it got here–all in a single, integrated view.

Enable mission-critical decision-making

Good information design matters. What is the visual representation
that best communicates the metric? Not enough attention is spent
on information visualization techniques and pushing business and
operational critical data to decision makers.
What are the decisions the user needs to make? IoT applications
should empower good decisions that have a positive impact on the
individual or business.
To increase the pace of and instill higher confidence in decision-
making, make sure your aesthetic presentation is contextually
appropriate for specific roles to maximize clarity. The data display
should be relevant, clear, and memorable.

Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics

If we want the IoT data we collect and analyze to have real-world
impact, machine learning, predictive modeling, and process adapta‐
tion are essential tools. Through this learn-predict-adapt cycle, soft‐
ware for smart products and systems can turn intelligence into
action, moving beyond simple monitoring to anticipate problems
and take proactive steps to improve our systems (Figure 5-1).

Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics | 55

Figure 5-1. IoT data analysis requires machine learning, predictive
modeling, and system adaptation

Learning
Machine learning is an important tool for data description and dis‐
covery, particularly if you have an incomplete understanding of the
classifications, ranges, or kinds of device data that make up a partic‐
ular domain. Deciding which data aggregations make sense can
often require a depth of understanding about a problem domain,
which may or may not be available to you.
It can be difficult to understand exactly what a user needs to know,
which is why automated discovery can be so important. For example,
users may only care about a metric, like temperature, as an average
over the course of a day. A machine-learning algorithm can help you
understand when you need to consistently monitor a particular sig‐
nal, or, in contrast, when you really should only care about discover‐
ing the outliers. Additionally, by integrating and analyzing
information from multiple data sets, including those from third par‐
ties like weather and geographic information, automated discovery
algorithms can help find valuable patterns that would otherwise
remain hidden.

Predicting
You may be familiar with the popular IFTTT (If This, Then That)
service. The IFTTT pattern expects that a human has a priori
knowledge of what to do. However, within any set of potential IoT
events, the subset that we know what to do about is vanishingly
small. Here in the data, then, are mysteries to uncover. Which are
signals, and which are noise? Of the petabytes of data generated by

56 | Chapter 5: IoT Applications

my devices, where’s the insight I’m looking for? Where do we find it?
In short, If This, Then What?
IFTTW seeks answers to questions like:

• Is it time for preventative maintenance?

• Is it time to adjust a configuration?
• Is it time to order consumables?
• Is it time to procure a new part?
• Is it time to send a repair technician?
• Should we change the product? How?

When you leverage an analytics engine with your IoT solution, you
get not only a rearview-mirror, historical log of events that have
occurred, you also get a predictive view of the future, based on an
analytical model trained by that history.
Machine-learning algorithms can convert overwhelming amounts of
data, billions of points of information, into clear patterns. By exam‐
ining historical system data to understand what has happened in the
past, machine-learning algorithms can discover predictive models
that a human would likely never find.
These predictions help generate problem solving policies and meth‐
ods—heuristics derived from experience with similar issues or sce‐
narios—which can lead to important system adaptations. We can
use this intelligence to affect the business process if we know that a
problem or undesirable outcome is imminent.
As an example of this, let’s look at an IoT solution for automated
parking kiosks (Figure 5-2). Predictive modeling can help inform
the parking lot’s operations manager if a kiosk is at risk of failing,
and alert him to take preventative action. In this scenario, a
machine-learning algorithm examining historical data could detect,
for instance, that a high volume of kiosk transactions per day com‐
bined with significant precipitation and an average outdoor temper‐
ature below a certain threshold signals that the kiosk’s credit card
acceptor is likely to fail within a short timeframe. This heuristic,
derived from a group of unique situational factors and long-term
data, would have taken a field service technician a decade of experi‐
ence with the product to understand. That discovery, made by a

Machine Learning and Predictive Analytics | 57

machine-learning algorithm, becomes a new input into the data
model for the kiosk, a prediction that becomes part of its API.

Figure 5-2. A dashboard depicting data analysis for automated park‐

ing systems

Adapting
Not long ago, systems were designed with the pattern that looked
like this:

1. Dump data into a database.

2. Every night, run queries against the new data and apply some
business logic.
3. Dump the output of the batch operation into a database.
4. Run a report explaining what happened.

Unfortunately, this pattern doesn’t get us very far in the faced-paced

world of the IoT. As we’ve seen, the store-then-query approach of
the past is not tractable, and moreover, not timely. We need to react
to events in real time.
Predictive analytics can enable preventative action and facilitate
real-time system adaptation, but only if the insights from machine
learning are discoverable by users. For this to happen, it’s important
to create intelligent systems that are integrated tightly with the
operational processes and technologies already in place.
In smart manufacturing, machine-learning algorithms automatically
detect patterns and anomalies in complex production processes and

58 | Chapter 5: IoT Applications

flag machines for maintenance before downtime or manufacturing
errors occur. For instance, an algorithm might discover that when a
facility experiences a drastic swing in humidity levels, machines
operating above a certain temperature are most likely to fail. It’s not
enough for our IoT software to provide this heuristic in isolation; it
must deliver the information at the right time to the right user. This
might be achieved by integrating predictive information as a contin‐
uous data feed in the factory’s existing production planning and
supply chain management (SCM) systems. On days when humidity
becomes an issue, the software surfaces a series of alerts. When the
machines run at a higher temperature, workers can adapt operations
accordingly by either increasing the dehumidifying processes or
running the machines during cooler, evening temperatures. In this
way, manufacturers can adapt their processes to better manage
potential inhibitors to successful production runs.

Rapid Application Development

You may (or may not) remember the revolution in development that
came about when Microsoft first launched Visual Basic in 1991.
Prior to Visual Basic, if you wanted to develop a graphical user
interface (GUI) for software, you submitted yourself to strange and
arcane forms of coding, with complicated APIs to draw basic objects
like lines and rectangles. Visual Basic and other similar tools were
responsible for the explosion of productive developers who were, for
the first time, able to deliver consistent—if not particularly engaging
—software interfaces. In many ways, Visual Basic helped drive the
desktop PC revolution.
So, aren’t software developers still using such tools today? Well, yes
and no. In many ways, we have taken a few steps back in productiv‐
ity, not because we no longer value rapid application development
(RAD) tools, but rather because the types of user experiences and
accompanying rendering environments have increased dramatically:
from desktop to tablet, mobile, devices, and everything in between.
Now engineers might require multiple sets of tools to create the
same experience across platforms and devices.
With an application enablement platform (AEP), you can leverage
the foundational elements of the edge, the cloud, and the model lay‐
ers using a set of visual UI and functional design patterns designed

Rapid Application Development | 59

specifically for the IoT, and pre-wired for connected devices pro‐
duced by a wide range of manufacturers.
Leveraging an AEP shields designers and developers from a degree
of complexity by providing abstractions that allow for rapid devel‐
opment. A growing number of companies offer application enable‐
ment platforms, including ThingWorx (a PTC company) and Xively
(from LogMeIn), among others, with Microsoft and SAP adding IoT
capabilities to their product lines, as well. To be business-agile and
ready to respond to changes, it’s worth considering an AEP that’s
tuned for the application-building requirements of the Internet of
Things.

60 | Chapter 5: IoT Applications

 APPENDIX A
Companies, Products, and Links

Throughout this book, we’ve discussed a variety of companies and

products to illustrate important concepts in and approaches to foun‐
dational solutions for the Internet of Things. The following list of
these companies and products, ordered alphabetically, contains rele‐
vant links to further information.

Product Company Link

Arduino Uno Arduino https://www.arduino.cc/en/Main/ArduinoBoardUno
AirPrime MC Series Sierra Wireless http://www.sierrawireless.com/products-and-solutions/emb
Communication edded-solutions/em-and-mc-series/
Module
Bathroom/ Involution http://www.goinvo.com
healthroom Studios
CalAmp LMU 330 CalAmp Corp. http://www.calamp.com/products/tracking-and-telemetry-d
evices/fleet-tracking-units/lmu-3030
Cisco Connected Cisco Systems, http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/products/routers/1000-series
Grid Router Inc. -connected-grid-routers/index.html
Dell Edge Gateway Dell https://www.dell.com/learn/us/en/uscorp1/secure/2015-10
5000 Series -20-dell-edge-gateway-5000-internet-of-things
FitBit Surge FitBit https://www.fitbit.com/surge
Intel Galileo Intel http://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/embedded/prod
ucts/galileo/galileo-overview.html
JDLink Deere & Co. https://www.deere.com/en_INT/products/equipment/agricu
ltural_management_solutions/jdlink_telematics/jdlink_tel
ematics.page
K-Rain Indexing K-Rain http://www.krain.com/indexing-valves/6000-series-indexin
valve g-valves-6-outlet.html?uasCatalog=1

61
Product Company Link
Mimo Baby Monitor Rest Devices, http://www.mimobaby.com
Inc.
Samsung Smart TV Samsung http://www.samsung.com/us/experience/smart-tv/
Grove water flow Seed http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/G12-Water-Flow-Senso
sensor Development r-p-635.html
Limited
Smart Body Withings, Inc. http://www.withings.com/us/en/products/smart-body-anal
Analyzer yzer
Smart Pill Bottle AdhereTech http://adheretech.com/
Texas Instruments Texas http://www.ti.com/product/cc3200
CC3200 Instruments
Microcontroller
ThingWorx IoT PTC, Inc. http://www.thingworx.com/IoT-Platform
Platform
Xively IoT Platform LogMeIn, Inc. https://xively.com/whats_xively/

62 | Appendix A: Companies, Products, and Links

About the Authors
As VP of IoT Technology at ThingWorx, a PTC business, Joe Biron
leads a team that guides the technical architecture between the
ThingWorx IoT platform and ThingWorx Ready partners. Joe has
broad knowledge of IoT solutions, has led engineering teams
focused on edge technology as well as cloud services, and has been
deeply involved in the solution architecture for many ThingWorx
customers.
Jonathan Follett is a Principal at Involution Studios where he is a
leader of the firm’s emerging technologies practice, working with cli‐
ents like Partners HealthCare, the Personal Genome Project, and
Walgreens. His work has been featured in the Atlantic, Forbes, the
Huffington Post, and WIRED. Jon is an author of four books, includ‐
ing Designing for Emerging Technologies (O’Reilly Media, 2014),
which offers a glimpse into what future interactions and user experi‐
ences may look like for rapidly developing technologies—from
genomics and nano printers to workforce robotics and the IoT.