1

Lahore Garrison University

CSC383- Internet of Things
Week3
Topic:
Introduction to IoT Hardware and Its Implementation

Semester- Fall 2020

Waqar Azeem
Assistant Professor
Department of Computer Science
Lahore Garrison University
 2
Overview of previous lecture

 IoT For Home and Industrial Automation

Lahore Garrison University

 3
Preamble

 As all real world things can be made Io-things; for which first making the the things a
system is more important.
 How the Iot hardware can be implemented.

Lahore Garrison University

IoT Hardware
• Why Do I Need to Understand IoT Hardware?
Doesn’t Engineers Make Those Decisions?
•
Yes, engineers are responsible for researching,
proposing, and executing on hardware choices for
the product. But it’s important for the Product
Manager to be involved and to guide engineering on
the product needs so they can choose the best
solution. After all, hardware decisions can impact
your product’s cost, user experience, application
capabilities, and more.
The 4 Building Blocks of IoT Device Hardware

• With as many IoT applications as there are IoT

entrepreneurs, it would be impossible to
generalize a hardware architecture. But
regardless of the application, all IoT devices
share some commonalities or “building blocks”,
as shown below:
Building Block 1: Thing
• I define “thing” as the asset that you want to control or
monitor.
• In many IoT products, the “thing” is fully integrated into
the smart device. For example, think of products like a
smart water pump or an autonomous vehicle. These
products control and monitor themselves. In this case,
your product includes all four building blocks in a single
package
• But there are many other applications where the “thing”
stands alone as a “dumb” device, and a separate product
is connected to it to make it a smart device. i.e smart
coffee maker
• This is very common in industrial applications where
companies have existing assets, and they want to
make them “smart” by connecting them to the
Cloud. Some examples include wind turbines, jet
engines, conveyer belts, etc.
• The reason I point out this difference is to make you
aware that there are different business models you
could choose from. Your company can decide to build
brand new devices that are smart from the very
beginning, or you can decide that your value
proposition is to provide a way to turn existing things
into smart things, opening the door to what’s called
“brownfield opportunities”.
• Either one is fine, just keep in mind that this
distinction will affect many other decisions you
make for your product.
• In the consumer product world, many IoT
products only include the three modules . That’s
because the “thing” they are monitoring is often
a human or the environment of the home. Think
of a FitBit.
Building Block 2: Data Acquisition Module

• The data acquisition module focuses on acquiring physical

signals from the “thing” and converting them into digital
signals that can be manipulated by a computer.
• This is the hardware component that includes all the sensors
acquiring real-world signals such as temperature, motion,
light, vibration, etc. The type and number of sensors you need
depend on your application.
• The data acquisition module includes more than sensors
though. It also includes the necessary hardware to convert
the sensor signal into digital information for the computer to
use. This includes signal conditioning, analog-to-digital
conversion, scaling, and interpretation.
For the data acquisition module, the important considerations to focus on are:

• What physical signals do I need to measure? (i.e. what type

of sensors do I need)
• How many sensors of each type do I need?
• How fast should I measure the real-world signal? (i.e.
sample rate)
• How much accuracy do I need in my measurement? (i.e.
sensor resolution)
• The answers to these questions will inform the requirements
for your data acquisition module, as well as give you an idea
of how much data your device will produce.
Building Block 3: Data Processing Module

• The third building block of the device is the data

processing module. This is the “computer” that
processes the data, performs local analytics, stores
data locally, and performs any other computing
operations at the edge.
• You don’t need to be an expert in computer
architecture to have a solid conversation with your
engineering team about this module. Your role
should be to understand the comprehensive goal of
the product and ask the right questions that will
guide your team to the right decisions.
The two most important considerations to focus on are:

• Processing power (i.e. how much processing will

you do ?)
• Amount of local data storage (i.e. hard drive size
— how much data will you need to store)
• The decisions you and your team make will have
a direct correlation with performance,
functionality, cost, size of the device, useful life,
etc.
How much processing power do you need?

• Items that will impact your decision include:

• How many sensors do you need to read? (More sensors will
require more processing power.)
• Do you need to perform real-time control? (This will definitely
increase the processing power required.)
• Does your application need to perform analytics ? (This will
also increase the processing power required.)
• Do you have enough processing power to support future
software upgrades/releases? (Your new and improved
software upgrades will likely require more processing power.)
• What are the size constraints of your device? (For example, a
Fitbit only has so much space that limiting processing power.)
How much local storage do you need?

• The amount of local storage you need depends on your data

retention policy. Once you define how much data you need to
acquire, how often, and how much you will send to the Cloud,
then you can calculate how much local storage you’ll need as
temporary storage for doing calculations or to serve as a
buffer in case you lose the connection to the Cloud.

• If your product is expected to work offline, you need to define

for how long it will operate without a connection, and
therefore, how much data you need to be able to store locally.
Some applications require no interruptions in the data.
Building Block 4: Communications Module

• The last building block of your device’s hardware is the

communications module. This is the circuitry that enables
communications within IOT body , your Cloud Platform, and with
3rd party systems either locally or in the Cloud.

• This module may include communication ports such as USB, serial

(232/485), CAN, or Modbus, to name a few. It may also include the
radio technology for wireless communications such as Wi-Fi,,
ZigBee, etc.

• The communications module can be included in the same device as

your other modules, or it could be a separate device that is
specifically for communications. This approach is often referred to
as a “gateway architecture”.
• For example, if you have three sensors in a room that need to
send data to the Cloud, you might have those sensors
connected to a single gateway in that same room, and the
gateway combines this data and sends it to the Cloud. That
way, you only need one communications module, not three.
•
The Bottom Line
• As an IoT Product Manager, you don’t need to be an expert in
all areas of the IoT Technology Stack. But you do need a solid
understanding of the major components and how an end-to-
end IoT solution is put together.
Smart Objects
• Objects that are able to sense the environment,
interpret the environment, self-configure,
interact with other objects and exchange
information with people

Smart Fridge
Traditional Computing System: HCI

explicit explicit
input System output

"Human-computer interaction is a discipline concerned with the

design, evaluation and implementation of interactive computing
systems for human use and with the study of major phenomena
surrounding them." -- Association for Computing Machinery
Why is HCI Important?
• It can affect
– Effectiveness
– Productivity
– Morale
– Safety

• Bad interfaces:
– Confusing
– Cumbersome
– Time-consuming
– Uninformative
– Lead to errors
– …
Interfaces
• Tangible interfaces
• Keyboard/mouse/screen/speakers
• Pen input
• Touch
• Intangible interfaces
• Speech/audio/sound
• Gesture, eye movement
• Virtual/augmented reality (VR, AR)
• Multi-modal interactive interfaces: more than just
one input/output channel
Interface Discussion
• Ease-of-Use?
• Flexibility?
• Accuracy?
• Safety?
• Privacy?
Touch as Input
Gesture/Motion as Input
Eye Movement as Input
Haptic Interfaces
Augmented Reality
Wearable Computing
• Computation devices accompany you, rather
than you seeking them out
Speech Input
• Human beings have a great and natural mastery
of speech
– makes it difficult to appreciate the complexities
– but it’s an easy medium for communication
Windows Speech Recognition
• Supplied with every Windows machine
– From ‘98 on
– Almost no one used it
• What was the problem?
– Need to “train” users to use early virtual
assistants (VAs)
– Microphone expense determines quality
And Then There Was Siri
A Technical Success
– Consistent microphone gives predictable quality
– Inclusion on every iPhone made it mainstream
Current Incarnations
•What these look like now
– Specialized hardware
– Domestic setting
– Initially aimed at home automation
– Mostly used for home entertainment
– All open to 3rd parties
Embedded System/Computer
• “Any sort of device which includes a
programmable computer but itself is not
intended to be a general-purpose computer”
– Wayne Wolf
• Dedicated
Automotive Embedded Systems
Automotive Embedded Systems
• Today’s high-end automobile may have 100+
microprocessors:
– Seat belt; dashboard devices; engine control; ABS;
automatic stability control; navigation system;
infotainment system; collision avoidance system; tire
pressure monitoring; lane warning; adaptive cruise
control; climate control; airbag control unit; electric
window and central locking; parking aid; automatic
wiper control; alarm and immobilizer; power seat;
electric power steering; electronic transmission;
active suspension
Embedded Processor Market
• 80 million PCs every year
• 3 billion embedded CPUs every year
General-Purpose Processor
• Programmable device,
“microprocessor” Controller Datapath

• Features Control
logic and
Register
file
– Program memory State
register
– General data path with large General
IR PC ALU
register file and general ALU
• User benefits Program Data
– Low time-to-market and NRE costs memory memory

– High flexibility Assembly code

for:

• Examples: Intel Core i7, AMD total = 0

for i =1 to …
Ryzen 5, etc.
Dedicated Processor
• Digital circuit designed specifically for one
purpose
• Features
– Contains only the components needed to execute a
single program
– No program memory Controller Datapath

• Benefits Control
logic
index

– Fast State
total

– Low power register +

– Small size
Data
memory
Application-Specific Processor (ASIC)
• Programmable processor optimized
for a particular class of applications
that have common characteristics Controller Datapath

(compromise) Control
logic and
Registers

• Features State
register
Custom
– Program memory ALU
IR PC
– Optimized data path
Data
– Special functional units Program memory
memory
• Benefits
Assembly code
– Some flexibility, good performance, for:

size, and power, “reusable” total = 0

for i =1 to …
Characteristics of Embedded Systems
• Dedicated functionality
• Small size and low weight
• Low power
• Harsh environments
• Safety-critical operation
• Cost sensitive
Embedded vs. Real Time Systems
• Embedded system: is a computer system that performs a
limited set of specific functions; it often interacts with its
environment
• RTS: Correctness of the system depends not only on the
logical results, but also on the time in which the results
are produced

Real Time Embedded

Systems Systems

Examples?
Examples
• Real Time Embedded:
– Nuclear reactor control
– Flight control
– Basically any safety critical system
– GPS
– MP3 player
– Mobile phone
• Real Time, but not Embedded:
– Stock trading system
– Skype
– Netflix
• Embedded, but not Real Time:
– Home temperature control
– Washing machine, refrigerator, etc.
 43
Lecture Outcomes

 Real and Embedded Systems

 Hardware implementation possibilities and techniques

Lahore Garrison University

 44

Q&A

Lahore Garrison University

 45
References

These lecture notes were made from following source:

 Internet of Things Principals and Paradigms by Rajkumar Buyya, imprint of Elsevier

Lahore Garrison University