Unit 1: Introduction to Internet of Things

Introduction to Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet of Things (IoT) is the networking of physical objects that contain electronics embedded
within their architecture in order to communicate and sense interactions amongst each other
or with respect to the external environment. In the upcoming years, IoT-based technology will
offer advanced levels of services and practically change the way people lead their daily lives.
Advancements in medicine, power, gene therapies, agriculture, smart cities, and smart homes
are just a very few of the categorical examples where IoT is strongly established.

Over 9 billion ‘Things’ (physical objects) are currently connected to the Internet, as of now. In
the near future, this number is expected to rise to a whopping 20 billion.

There are four main components used in IoT:

1. Low-power embedded systems: Less battery consumption, high performance are the
inverse factors that play a significant role during the design of electronic systems.

2. Cloud computing: Data collected through IoT devices is massive and this data has to be
stored on a reliable storage server. This is where cloud computing comes into play. The data
is processed and learned, giving more room for us to discover where things like electrical
faults/errors are within the system.

3. Availability of big data: We know that IoT relies heavily on sensors, especially in real-time.
As these electronic devices spread throughout every field, their usage is going to trigger a
massive flux of big data.

4. Networking connection: In order to communicate, internet connectivity is a must where

each physical object is represented by an IP address. However, there are only a limited
number of addresses available according to the IP naming. Due to the growing number of
devices, this naming system will not be feasible anymore. Therefore, researchers are looking
for another alternative naming system to represent each physical object.

There are two ways of building IoT:

1. Form a separate internetwork including only physical objects.
2. Make the Internet ever more expansive, but this requires hard-core technologies such as
rigorous cloud computing and rapid big data storage (expensive).

In the near future, IoT will become broader and more complex in terms of scope. It will change
the world in terms of

“anytime, anyplace, anything in connectivity.”

IoT Enablers:

 RFIDs: uses radio waves in order to electronically track the tags attached to each physical
object.

 Sensors: devices that are able to detect changes in an environment (ex: motion detectors).

 Nanotechnology: as the name suggests, these are extremely small devices with dimensions
usually less than a hundred nanometers.

 Smart networks: (ex: mesh topology).

Characteristics of IoT:

 Massively scalable and efficient

 IP-based addressing will no longer be suitable in the upcoming future.

 An abundance of physical objects is present that do not use IP, so IoT is made possible.

 Devices typically consume less power. When not in use, they should be automatically
programmed to sleep.

 A device that is connected to another device right now may not be connected in another
instant of time.

 Intermittent connectivity – IoT devices aren’t always connected. In order to save bandwidth
and battery consumption, devices will be powered off periodically when not in use.
Otherwise, connections might turn unreliable and thus prove to be inefficient.

As a quick note, IoT incorporates trillions of sensors, billions of smart systems, and millions of
applications.

Application Domains: IoT is currently found in four different popular domains:

1) Manufacturing/Industrial business - 40.2%
2) Healthcare - 30.3%
3) Security - 7.7%
4) Retail - 8.3%

Modern Applications:
1. Smart Grids and energy saving
2. Smart cities
3. Smart homes
4. Healthcare
5. Earthquake detection
6. Radiation detection/hazardous gas detection
7. Smartphone detection
8. Water flow monitoring
9. Traffic monitoring
10. Wearables

Architecture of Internet of Things (IoT)

Internet of Things (IoT) technology has a wide variety of applications and use of Internet of
Things is growing so faster. Depending upon different application areas of Internet of Things, it
works accordingly as per it has been designed/developed. But it has not a standard defined
architecture of working which is strictly followed universally. The architecture of IoT depends
upon its functionality and implementation in different sectors. Still, there is a basic process flow
based on which IoT is built.

So, from the above image it is clear that there is 4 layers are present that can be divided as
follows: Sensing Layer, Network Layer, Data processing Layer, and Application Layer.
These are explained as following below.

1. Sensing Layer –
Sensors, actuators, devices are present in this Sensing layer. These Sensors or Actuators
 accepts data(physical/environmental parameters), processes data and emits data over
network.

2. Network Layer –

Internet/Network gateways, Data Acquisition System (DAS) are present in this layer. DAS
performs data aggregation and conversion function (Collecting data and aggregating data then
converting analog data of sensors to digital data etc). Advanced gateways which mainly opens
up connection between Sensor networks and Internet also performs many basic gateway
functionalities like malware protection, and filtering also sometimes decision making based on
inputted data and data management services, etc.

3. Data processing Layer –

This is processing unit of IoT ecosystem. Here data is analyzed and pre-processed before
sending it to data center from where data is accessed by software applications often termed as
business applications where data is monitored and managed and further actions are also
prepared. So here Edge IT or edge analytics comes into picture.

4. Application Layer –

This is last layer of 4 stages of IoT architecture. Data centers or cloud is management stage of
data where data is managed and is used by end-user applications like agriculture, health care,
aerospace, farming, defense, etc.

Physical Design of Internet of Things (IOT)

 The physical design of an IoT system is referred to the Things/Devices and protocols that
used to build an IoT system. all these things/Devices are called Node Devices and every
device has a unique identity that performs remote sensing, actuating, and monitoring work.
and the protocols that used to established communication between the Node devices and
server over the internet.
Things/Devices

 Things/Devices are used to build a connection, process data, provide interfaces, provide
storage, and provide graphics interfaces in an IoT system. all these generate data in a form
that can be analyzed by an analytical system and program to perform operations and used
to improve the system. For example, temperature sensor that is used to analyze the
temperature generates the data from a location and then determined by algorithms.

Connectivity
 Devices like USB host and ETHERNET are used for connectivity between the devices and
server.
Processor
 A processor like a CPU and other units are used to process the data. these data are further
used to improve the decision quality of an IoT system.
Audio/Video Interfaces
 An interface like HDMI and RCA devices is used to record audio and videos in a system.
Input/Output interface
 To giving input and output signals to sensors, and actuators we use things like UART, SPI,
CAN, etc.
Storage Interfaces
 Things like SD, MMC, SDIO are used to store the data generated from an IoT device.
 Other things like DDR, GPU are used to control the activity of an IoT system.
IoT Protocols
These protocols are used to establish communication between a node device and server over
the internet. it helps to send commands to an IoT device and receive data from an IoT device
over the internet. we use different types of protocols that present on both the server and
client-side and these protocols are managed by network layers like application, transport,
network, and link layer.

Application Layer protocol

In this layer, protocols define how the data can be sent over the network with the lower layer
protocols using the application interface. these protocols including HTTP, WebSocket, XMPP,
MQTT, DDS, and AMQP protocols.

HTTP

Hypertext transfer protocol is a protocol that presents in an application layer for transmitting
media documents. it is used to communicate between web browsers and servers. it makes a
request to a server and then waits till it receives a response and in between the request server
does not keep any data between two requests.

WebSocket

This protocol enables two-way communication between a client and a host that can be run on
an untrusted code in a controlled environment. this protocol is commonly used by web
browsers.
MQTT

It is a machine-to-machine connectivity protocol that was designed as a publish/subscribe

messaging transport. and it is used for remote locations where a small code footprint is
required.

Transport Layer

This layer is used to control the flow of data segments and handle the error control. also, these
layer protocols provide end-to-end message transfer capability independent of the underlying
network.

TCP

The transmission control protocol is a protocol that defines how to establish and maintain a
network that can exchange data in a proper manner using the internet protocol.

UDP

a user datagram protocol is a part of internet protocol called the connectionless protocol. this
protocol not required to establish the connection to transfer data.

Network Layer

This layer is used to send datagrams from the source network to the destination network. we
use IPv4 and IPv6 protocols as a host identification that transfers data in packets.

IPv4

This is a protocol address that is a unique and numerical label assigned to each device
connected with the network. an IP address performs two main functions host and location
addressing. IPv4 is an IP address that is 32 bit long.

IPv6

It is a successor of IPv4 that uses 128 bits for an IP address. it is developed by the IETF task
force to deal with the long-anticipated problems.

Link Layer

Link-layer protocols are used to send data over the network's physical layer. it also determines
how the packets are coded and signaled by the devices.

Ethernet

It is a set of technologies and protocols that are used primarily in LANs. it defines the physical
layer and the medium access control for wired ethernet networks.
WiFi

It is a set of LAN protocols and specifies the set of media access control and physical layer
protocols for implementing wireless local area networks.

Logical Design of IoT

The logical design of an IoT system refers to an abstract representation of entities and
processes without going into the low-level specifies of implementation. it uses Functional
Blocks, Communication Models, and Communication APIs to implement a system.
But before you learn about the logical design of IoT systems you need to know a little bit about
the physical design of IoT.

IoT Functional blocks

An IoT system consist number of functional blocks like Devices, services, communication,
security, and application that provides the capability for sensing, actuation, identification,
communication, and management.
These functional blocks consist of devices that provide monitoring control functions, handle
communication between host and server, manage the transfer of data, secure the system using
authentication and other functions, and interface to control and monitor various terms.

Application

It is an interface that provides a control system that use by users to view the status and analyze
of system.

Management

This functional block provides various functions that are used to manage an IoT system.

Services

This functional block provides some services like monitoring and controlling a device and
publishing and deleting the data and restore the system.

Communication

This block handles the communication between the client and cloud-based server and
sends/receives the data using protocols.

Security

This block is used to secure an IoT system using some functions like authorization, data security,
authentication, 2 step verification, etc.

Device

These devices are used to provide sensing and monitoring control functions that collect the
data from the outer environment.

IoT Communication Models

There are several different types of models available in an IoT system that used to
communicate between the system and server like the request-response model, publish-
subscribe model, push-pull model, and exclusive pair model, etc.

Request-Response Communication Model

This model is a communication model in which a client sends the request for data to the server
and the server responds according to the request. when a server receives a request it fetches
the data, retrieves the resources and prepares the response, and then sends the data back to
the client.
Foundation course by prepbytes

In simple terms, we can say that in the request-response model server send the response of
equivalent on the request of the client. in this model, HTTP works as a request-response
protocol between a client and server. Example, When we search a query on a browser then the
browser submits an HTTP request to the server and then the server returns a response to the
browser(client).

Publish-Subscribe Communication Model

In this communication model, we have a broker between publisher and consumer. here
publishers are the source of data but they are not aware of consumers. they send the data
managed by the brokers and when a consumer subscribes to a topic that managed by the
broker and when the broker receives data from the publisher it sends the data to all the
subscribed consumers.
Example, On the website many times we subscribed to their newsletters using our email
address. these email addresses managed by some third-party services and when a new article
published on the website it directly sends to the broker and then the broker send these new
data or post to all the subscribers.

Push-Pull Communication Model

It is a communication model in which the data push by the producers in a queue and the
consumers pull the data from the queues. here also producers are not aware of the consumers.

Example

When we visit a website, we saw a number of posts that published in a queue and according to
our requirements, we click on a post and start reading it.

Exclusive Pair Communication Model

It is a bidirectional fully duplex communication model that uses a persistent connection

between the client and server. here first set up a connection between the client and the server
and remains open until the client sends a close connection request to the server.
IoT communication APIs

These APIs like REST and WebSocket are used to communicate between the server and system
in IoT.

REST-based communication APIs

Representational state transfer (REST) API uses a set of architectural principles that used to
design web services. these APIs focus on the systems' resources that how resource states are
transferred using the request-response communication model. this API uses some architectural
constraints.

Client-server

Here the client is not aware of the storage of data because it is concerned about the server and
similarly the server should not be concerned about the user interface because it is a concern of
the client. and this separation is needed for independent development and updating of server
and client. no matter how the client is using the response of the server and no matter how the
server is using the request of the client.

Stateless

It means each request from the client to the server must contain all the necessary information
to understand by the server. because if the server can't understand the request of the client
then it can't fetch the request data in a proper manner.

Cacheable

In response, if the cache constraints are given then a client can reuse that response in a later
request. it improves the efficiency and scalability of the system without loading the extra data.

A RESTful web APIs is implemented using HTTP and REST principles.

WebSocket based communication API

This type of API allows bi-directional full-duplex communication between server and client
using the exclusive pair communication model. this API uses full-duplex communication so it
does not require a new connection setup every time when it requests new data. WebSocket API
begins with a connection setup between the server and client and if the WebSocket is
supported by the server then it responds back to the client with the successful response and
after setup of a connection server and client can send data to each other in full-duplex mode.

This type of API reduces the traffic and latency of data and makes sure that each time when we
request new data it cannot terminate the request.
Communication Models in IoT (Internet of Things)

IoT devices are found everywhere and will enable circulatory intelligence in the future. For
operational perception, it is important and useful to understand how various IoT devices
communicate with each other. Communication models used in IoT have great value. The IoTs
allow people and things to be connected any time, any space, with anything and anyone, using
any network and any service.

Types of Communication Model:

1. Request & Response Model –

This model follows a client-server architecture.

 The client, when required, requests the information from the server. This request is usually
in the encoded format.

 This model is stateless since the data between the requests is not retained and each request
is independently handled.

 The server Categories the request, and fetches the data from the database and its resource
representation. This data is converted to response and is transferred in an encoded format
to the client. The client, in turn, receives the response.

 On the other hand — In Request-Response communication model client sends a request to

the server and the server responds to the request. When the server receives the request it
decides how to respond, fetches the data retrieves resources, and prepares the response,
and sends it to the client.
 2. Publisher-Subscriber Model –

This model comprises three entities: Publishers, Brokers, and Consumers.

 Publishers are the source of data. It sends the data to the topic which are managed by the
broker. They are not aware of consumers.

 Consumers subscribe to the topics which are managed by the broker.

 Hence, Brokers responsibility is to accept data from publishers and send it to the
appropriate consumers. The broker only has the information regarding the consumer to
which a particular topic belongs to which the publisher is unaware of.

3. Push-Pull Model –

The push-pull model constitutes data publishers, data consumers, and data queues.

 Publishers and Consumers are not aware of each other.

 Publishers publish the message/data and push it into the queue. The consumers, present on
the other side, pull the data out of the queue. Thus, the queue acts as the buffer for the
message when the difference occurs in the rate of push or pull of data on the side of a
publisher and consumer.

 Queues help in decoupling the messaging between the producer and consumer. Queues
also act as a buffer which helps in situations where there is a mismatch between the rate at
which the producers push the data and consumers pull the data.
4. Exclusive Pair –

 Exclusive Pair is the bi-directional model, including full-duplex communication among client
and server. The connection is constant and remains open till the client sends a request to
close the connection.

 The Server has the record of all the connections which has been opened.

 This is a state-full connection model and the server is aware of all open connections.

 WebSocket based communication API is fully based on this model.

 Unit 2. IoT and M2M
machine-to-machine (M2M)
Machine-to-machine, or M2M, is a broad label that can be used to describe any technology that
enables networked devices to exchange information and perform actions without the manual
assistance of humans. Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) facilitate the
communication between systems, allowing them to make their own autonomous choices.

M2M technology was first adopted in manufacturing and industrial settings, where other
technologies, such as SCADA and remote monitoring, helped remotely manage and control
data from equipment. M2M has since found applications in other sectors, such as healthcare,
business and insurance. M2M is also the foundation for the internet of things (IoT).

How M2M works

The main purpose of machine-to-machine technology is to tap into sensor data and transmit it
to a network. Unlike SCADA or other remote monitoring tools, M2M systems often use public
networks and access methods -- for example, cellular or Ethernet -- to make it more cost-
effective.

The main components of an M2M system include sensors, RFID, a Wi-Fi or cellular
communications link, and autonomic computing software programmed to help a network
device interpret data and make decisions. These M2M applications translate the data, which
can trigger preprogrammed, automated actions.

One of the most well-known types of machine-to-machine communication is telemetry, which

has been used since the early part of the last century to transmit operational data. Pioneers in
telemetric first used telephone lines, and later, radio waves, to transmit performance
measurements gathered from monitoring instruments in remote locations.

The Internet and improved standards for wireless technology have expanded the role of
telemetry from pure science, engineering and manufacturing to everyday use in products such
as heating units, electric meters and internet-connected devices, such as appliances.

Beyond being able to remotely monitor equipment and systems, the top benefits of M2M
include:

 reduced costs by minimizing equipment maintenance and downtime;

 boosted revenue by revealing new business opportunities for servicing products in the field;
and

 improved customer service by proactively monitoring and servicing equipment before it fails
or only when it is needed.
M2M applications and examples

Machine-to-machine communication is often used for remote monitoring. In product

restocking, for example, a vending machine can message the distributor's network, or machine,
when a particular item is running low to send a refill. An enabler of asset tracking and
monitoring, M2M is vital in warehouse management systems (WMS) and supply chain
management (SCM).

Utilities companies often rely on M2M devices and applications to not only harvest energy,
such as oil and gas, but also to bill customers -- through the use of smart meters -- and to
detect worksite factors, such as pressure, temperature and equipment status.

In telemedicine, M2M devices can enable the real time monitoring of patients' vital statistics,
dispensing medicine when required or tracking healthcare assets.

The combination of the IoT, AI and ML is transforming and improving mobile

payment processes and creating new opportunities for different purchasing behaviors. Digital
wallets, such as Google Wallet and Apple Pay, will most likely contribute to the widespread
adoption of M2M financial activities.

Smart home systems have also incorporated M2M technology. The use of M2M in
this embedded system enables home appliances and other technologies to have real time
control of operations as well as the ability to remotely communicate.
M2M is also an important aspect of remote-control software, robotics, traffic control, security,
logistics and fleet management and automotive.

Key features of M2M

Key features of M2M technology include:

 Low power consumption, in an effort to improve the system's ability to effectively service
M2M applications.

 A Network operator that provides packet-switched service

 Monitoring abilities that provide functionality to detect events.

 Time tolerance, meaning data transfers can be delayed.

 Time control, meaning data can only be sent or received at specific predetermined periods.

 Location specific triggers that alert or wake up devices when they enter particular areas.

 The ability to continually send and receive small amounts of data.

M2M requirements

According to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), requirements of an

M2M system include:

 Scalability - The M2M system should be able to continue to function efficiently as more
connected objects are added.

 Anonymity - The M2M system must be able to hide the identity of an M2M device when
requested, subject to regulatory requirements.

 Logging - M2M systems must support the recording of important events, such as failed
installation attempts, service not operating or the occurrence of faulty information.
The logs should be available by request.

 M2M application communication principles - M2M systems should enable communication

between M2M applications in the network and the M2M device or gateway using
communication techniques, such as short message service (SMS) and IP Connected devices
should also be able to communicate with each other in a peer-to-peer (P2P) manner.

 Delivery methods - The M2M system should support Unicast,

anycast, multicast and broadcast communication modes, with broadcast being replaced by
multicast or anycast whenever possible to minimize the load on the communication
network.
 Message transmission scheduling - M2M systems must be able to control network access
and messaging schedules and should be conscious of M2M applications' scheduling delay
tolerance.

 Message communication path selection - Optimization of the message communication

paths within an M2M system must be possible and based on policies like transmission
failures, delays when other paths exist and network costs.

M2M vs. IoT

While many use the terms interchangeably, M2M and IoT are not the same. IoT needs M2M,
but M2M does not need IoT.

Both terms relate to the communication of connected devices, but M2M systems are often
isolated, stand-alone networked equipment. IoT systems take M2M to the next level, bringing
together disparate systems into one large, connected ecosystem.

M2M systems use point-to-point communications between machines, sensors and hardware
over cellular or wired networks, while IoT systems rely on IP-based networks to send data
collected from IoT-connected devices to gateways, the cloud or middleware platforms.
Data collected from M2M devices is used by service management applications, whereas IoT
data is often integrated with enterprise systems to improve business performance across
multiple groups. Another way to look at it is that M2M affects how businesses operate, while
IoT does this and affects end users.

For example, in the product restocking example above, M2M involves the vending machine
communicating to the distributor's machines that a refill is needed. Incorporate IoT and an
additional layer of analytics is performed; the vending machine can predict when particular
products will need refilling based on purchase behaviors, offering users a more personalized
experience.

M2M security

Machine-to-machine systems face a number of security issues, from unauthorized access to

wireless intrusion to device hacking. Physical security, privacy, fraud and the exposure of
mission-critical applications must also be considered.

Typical M2M security measures include making devices and machines tamper-resistant,
embedding security into the machines, ensuring communication security
through encryption and securing back-end servers, among others. Segmenting M2M devices
onto their own network and managing device identity, data confidentiality and device
availability can also help combat M2M security risks.

Introduction to Sensors and Transducers

In this tutorial, we will learn a little bit about Sensors and Transducers, how to choose a Sensor,
requirements of Sensors and Transducers, what are the classification of sensors, few examples
of both Analog and digital sensors.

We live in an Analog World with Digital means of communication and control Mechanical
objects with Electrical signals. This is possible because of devices like sensors and transducers,
which help us in converting data or information from one domain to other.

Measurement is an important subsystem in any major system, whether it may be a mechanical

system or an electronic system. A measurement system consists of sensors, actuators,
transducers and signal processing devices. The use of these elements and devices is not limited
to measuring systems.

These are also used in the systems which perform specific tasks, to communicate with the real
world. The communication can be anything like reading the status of a signal from a switch or
to trigger a particular output to light up an LED.
Criteria to Choose a Sensor

The following are certain features that are considered when choosing a sensor.

1. Type of Sensing: The parameter that is being sensed like temperature or pressure.

2. Operating Principle: The principle of operation of the sensor.

3. Power Consumption: The power consumed by the sensor will play an important role in
defining the total power of the system.

4. Accuracy: The accuracy of the sensor is a key factor in selecting a sensor.

5. Environmental Conditions: The conditions in which the sensor is being used will be a
factor in choosing the quality of a sensor.

6. Cost: Depending on the cost of application, a low-cost sensor or high-cost sensor can be
used.

7. Resolution and Range: The smallest value that can be sensed and the limit of
measurement are important.

8. Calibration and Repeatability: Change of values with time and ability to repeat
measurements under similar conditions.

Basic Requirements of a Sensor or Transducer

The basic requirements of a sensor are:

1. Range: It indicates the limits of the input in which it can vary. In case of temperature
measurement, a thermocouple can have a range of 25 – 250 0C.

2. Accuracy: It is the degree of exactness between actual measurement and true value.
Accuracy is expressed as percentage of full range output.

3. Sensitivity: Sensitivity is a relationship between input physical signal and output

electrical signal. It is the ratio of change in output of the sensor to unit change in input
value that causes change in output.

4. Stability: It is the ability of the sensor to produce the same output for constant input
over a period of time.

5. Repeatability: It is the ability of the sensor to produce same output for different
applications with same input value.

6. Response Time: It is the speed of change in output on a stepwise change in input.

 7. Linearity: It is specified in terms of percentage of nonlinearity. Nonlinearity is an
indication of deviation of curve of actual measurement from the curve of ideal
measurement.

8. Ruggedness: It is a measure of the durability when the sensor is used under extreme
operating conditions.

9. Hysteresis: The hysteresis is defined as the maximum difference in output at any

measurable value within the sensor’s specified range when approaching the point first
with increasing and then with decreasing the input parameter. Hysteresis is a
characteristic that a transducer has in being unable to repeat its functionality faithfully
when used in the opposite direction of operation.

Classification of Sensors
The scheme of classifying sensors can range from very simple to very complex. The stimulus
that is being sensed is an important factor in this classification.

Some of the stimuli are

1. Acoustic: Wave, spectrum and wave velocity.

2. Electric: Current, charge, potential, electric field, permittivity and conductivity.

3. Magnetic: Magnetic field, magnetic flux and permeability.

4. Thermal: Temperature, specific heat and thermal conductivity.

5. Mechanical: Position, acceleration, force, pressure, stress, strain, mass, density,

momentum, torque, shape, orientation, roughness, stiffness, compliance, crystallinity
and structural.

6. Optical: Wave, wave velocity, refractive index, reflectivity, absorption and emissivity.

The sensors’ conversion phenomenon is also an important factor in classification of sensors.

Some of the conversion phenomena are magneto electric, thermoelectric and photoelectric.

Based on the applications of sensors, their classification can be made as follows.

I. Displacement, Position and Proximity Sensors

1. Resistive Element or Potentiometer

2. Capacitive Elements

3. Strain Gauged Element

 4. Inductive Proximity Sensors

5. Eddy Current Proximity Sensors

6. Differential Transformers

7. Optical Encoders

8. Hall Effect Sensors

9. Pneumatic Sensors

10. Proximity Switches

11. Rotary Encoders

II. Temperature Sensors

1. Thermistors

2. Thermocouple

3. Bimetallic Strips

4. Resistance Temperature Detectors

5. Thermostat

III. Light Sensors

1. Photo Diode

2. Phototransistor

3. Light Dependent Resistor

IV. Velocity and Motion

1. Pyroelectric Sensors

2. Tachogenerator

3. Incremental encoder

V. Fluid Pressure

1. Diaphragm Pressure Gauge

 2. Tactile Sensor

3. Piezoelectric Sensors

4. Capsules, Bellows, Pressure Tubes

VI. Liquid Flow and Level

1. Turbine Meter

2. Orifice Plate and Venturi Tube

VII. IR Sensor

1. Infrared Transmitter and Receiver Pair

VIII. Force

1. Strain Gauge

2. Load Cell

IX. Touch Sensors

1. Resistive Touch Sensor

2. Capacitive Touch Sensors

X. UV Sensors

1. Ultraviolet Light Detector

2. Photo Stability Sensors

3. UV Photo Tubes

4. Germicidal UV Detectors

All the sensors can be classified into two types based on the power or signal requirement. They
are Active sensors and passive sensors.

In order to operate active sensors, require power signal from an external source. This signal is
called an excitation signal, and based on this excitation signal the sensor produces output.
Strain gauge is an example of active sensor. It is a pressure sensitive resistive bridge network
and doesn’t produce the output electrical signal on its own. The amount of force applied can be
measured by relating it to the resistance of the network. The resistance can be measured by
passing current through it. Current acts as the excitation signal.
In contrast, passive sensors directly produce the output electrical signal in response to the input
stimulus. All the power required by a passive sensor is obtained from the measurand. A
thermocouple is a passive sensor.

Commonly used Sensors and Transducers

Some of the most commonly used sensors and transducers for different stimuli (the quantity to
be measured) are

1. For sensing light, the input devices or sensors are photo diode, photo transistor, light
dependent resistor and solar cells. The output devices or actuators are LEDs, displays,
lamps and fiber optics.

2. For sensing temperature, the sensors are thermistor, thermocouple, resistance

temperature detectors and thermostat. The actuators are heaters.

3. For sensing position, the input devices are potentiometer, proximity sensor, and
differential transformer. The output devices are motor and panel meter.

4. For sensing pressure, the sensors are strain gauge and load cell. The actuators are lifts
and jacks and electromagnetic vibrations.

5. For sensing sound, the input devices are microphones and output devices are
loudspeakers and buzzers.

6. For sensing speed, the sensors used are tachogenerator and Doppler Effect sensors. The
actuators are motors and brakes.

A Simple System using Transducers

A public addressing system is an example of a system using sensors and actuators.

It consists of a microphone, an amplifier and a loudspeaker. The sensor or the device with input
function is a microphone. It senses the sound signals and transforms them into electrical
signals. The amplifier receives these electrical signals and amplifies their strength.
The actuator or the device with output function is loudspeaker. It receives the amplified
electrical signals from the amplifier and converts them back into sound signals but with more
reach.

Analogue Sensors

An analogue sensor produces continuously varying output signals over a range of values.
Usually, the output signal is voltage and this output signal is proportional to the measurand.
The quantity that is being measured like speed, temperature, pressure, strain, etc. are all
continuous in nature and hence they are analogue quantities.

A Cadmium Sulfide Cell (CdS Cell) which is used to measure the intensity of light is an analogue
sensor. The resistance of a CdS cell varies according to the intensity of the light incident on it.
When connected to a voltage divider network, the change in resistance can be observed
through varying output voltage. In this circuit, the output can vary from anywhere between 0 V
to 5 V.

A thermocouple or a thermometer is an analog sensor. The following setup is used to measure

the temperature of the liquid in the container using a thermocouple.
The output signal of the above setup can be depicted as follows:

The output of an analogue sensor tends to change smoothly and continuously over time. Hence
the response time and accuracy of circuits employing analogue sensors is slow and less. In order
to use these signals in a microcontroller based system, Analog to Digital converters can be used.

Analogue sensors generally require an external power supply and amplification of some form to
produce appropriate output signals. Op Amps are very useful in providing amplification and
filtering.
Digital Sensors

A digital sensor produces discrete digital signals. The output of a digital sensor has only two
states, namely ‘ON’ and ‘OFF’. ON is logic 1 and OFF is logic 0. A push button switch is the best
example of a digital sensor. In this case, the switch has only two possible states: either it is ON
when pushed or it is OFF when released or not pushed.

The following setup uses a light sensor to measure the speed and produces a digital signal.

In the above setup, the rotating disc is connected to the shaft of a motor and has number of
transparent slots. The light sensor captures the presence or absence of the light and sends logic
1 or logic 0 signal accordingly to the counter. The counter displays the speed of the disc. The
accuracy can be increased by increasing the transparent slots on the disc as it allows more
counts over the same amount of time.

In general, the accuracy of a digital sensor is high when compared to an analogue sensor. The
accuracy depends on the number of bits that are used to represent the measurand. Higher the
number of bits, the greater is the accuracy.
 IoT security (internet of things security)

Security in IoT is the act of securing Internet devices and the networks they’re connected to
from threats and breaches by protecting, identifying, and monitoring risks all while helping fix
vulnerabilities from a range of devices that can pose security risks to your business.

What are the Biggest Challenges with Internet of Things Security?

Along with understanding "what is IoT security," it's important to note the biggest challenges
facing IoT security. IoT devices were not built with security in mind, leading to potential
vulnerabilities in a multiple device system. In the majority of cases, there is no way to install
security software on the device itself. In addition, they sometimes ship with malware on them,
which then infects the network they are connected to.

Some network security doesn’t have the ability to detect IoT devices connected to it and/or the
visibility to know what devices are communicating through the network.

How can today's IoT information security requirements be addressed?

IoT and security requirements can only be accomplished with an integrated solution that
delivers visibility, segmentation, and protection throughout the entire network infrastructure,
such as a holistic security fabric approach.

Your solution must have the following key abilities:

 Learn: With complete network visibility, security solutions can authenticate and classify IoT
devices to build a risk profile and assign them to IoT device groups.
 Segment: Once the enterprise understands its IoT attack surface, IoT devices can be segmented
into policy-driven groups based on their risk profiles.

 Protect: The policy-driven IoT groups and internal network segmentation enable monitoring,
inspection, and policy enforcement based on the activity at various points within the
infrastructure.

What is IoT Security from Fortinet?

The number of IoT devices being deployed into networks is growing at a phenomenal rate, up
to 1 million connected devices each day. While IoT solutions are enabling new and exciting
ways to improve efficiency, flexibility, and productivity, they also bring a new risk to the
network. Frequently designed without security, IoT devices have become a new threat vector
for bad actors to use when launching attacks. We have already seen several attacks leveraging
these distributed, seemingly innocent devices.

To provide protection in the age of IoT, network operators need to have the tools and skills to:

 See and profile every device on the network, to understand what IoT devices are being
deployed

 Control access to the network, both connecting to the network and determining where devices
can access

 Monitor the devices on the network to ensure that they are not compromised and to take
automatic and immediate action if they are

Fortinet provides these capabilities through our Network Access Control (NAC) product,
FortiNAC. Fully integrated into the Security Fabric, FortiNAC delivers the visibility, control, and
automated response needed to provide security in a world of IoT devices.

Internet of Things (IoT) Enabling Technologies

IoT(internet of things) enabling technologies are

1. Wireless Sensor Network

2. Cloud Computing

3. Big Data Analytics

4. Communications Protocols

5. Embedded System
1. Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) :

A WSN comprises distributed devices with sensors which are used to monitor the
environmental and physical conditions. A wireless sensor network consists of end nodes,
routers and coordinators. End nodes have several sensors attached to them where the data is
passed to a coordinator with the help of routers. The coordinator also acts as the gateway that
connects WSN to the internet.
Example –

 Weather monitoring system

 Indoor air quality monitoring system

 Soil moisture monitoring system

 Surveillance system

 Health monitoring system

2. Cloud Computing :

It provides us the means by which we can access applications as utilities over the internet.
Cloud means something which is present in remote locations.
With Cloud computing, users can access any resources from anywhere like databases,
webservers, storage, any device, and any software over the internet.
Characteristics –

1. Broad network access

2. On demand self-services

3. Rapid scalability

4. Measured service

5. Pay-per-use

Provides different services, such as –

 IaaS (Infrastructure as a service)

Infrastructure as a service provides online services such as physical machines, virtual machines,
servers, networking, storage and data center space on a pay per use basis. Major IaaS providers
are Google Compute Engine, Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure etc.
Ex : Web Hosting, Virtual Machine etc.
 PaaS (Platform as a service)

Provides a cloud-based environment with a very thing required to support the complete life
cycle of building and delivering West web based (cloud) applications – without the cost and
complexity of buying and managing underlying hardware, software provisioning and hosting.
Computing platforms such as hardware, operating systems and libraries etc. Basically, it
provides a platform to develop applications. Example: App Cloud, Google app engine

 SaaS (Software as a service)

It is a way of delivering applications over the internet as a service. Instead of installing and
maintaining software, you simply access it via the internet, freeing yourself from complex
software and hardware management. SaaS Applications are sometimes called web-based
software on demand software or hosted software. SaaS applications run on a SaaS provider’s
service and they manage security availability and performance. Example: Google Docs, Gmail,
office etc.

3. Big Data Analytics :

It refers to the method of studying massive volumes of data or big data. Collection of data
whose volume, velocity or variety is simply too massive and tough to store, control, process and
examine the data using traditional databases.
Big data is gathered from a variety of sources including social network videos, digital images,
sensors and sales transaction records.
Several steps involved in analyzing big data –

1. Data cleaning

2. Munging

3. Processing

4. Visualization

Examples –

 Bank transactions

 Data generated by IoT systems for location and tracking of vehicles

 E-commerce and in Big-Basket

 Health and fitness data generated by IoT system such as a fitness band
4. Communications Protocols :

They are the backbone of IoT systems and enable network connectivity and linking to
applications. Communication protocols allow devices to exchange data over the network.
Multiple protocols often describe different aspects of a single communication. A group of
protocols designed to work together is known as a protocol suite; when implemented in
software they are a protocol stack. They are used in

 Data encoding

 Addressing schemes

5. Embedded Systems:

It is a combination of hardware and software used to perform special tasks.

It includes microcontroller and microprocessor memory, networking units (Ethernet Wi-Fi
adapters), input output units (display keyword etc.) and storage devices (flash memory).
It collects the data and sends it to the internet. Embedded systems used in
Examples –

 Digital camera

 DVD player, music player

 Industrial robots

 Wireless Routers etc.

 UNIT 3 Sensors and Actuators in IoT
Sensors in Internet of Things(IoT)
Generally, sensors are used in the architecture of IOT devices. Sensors are used for sensing
things and devices etc. A device that provides a usable output in response to a specified
measurement. The sensor attains a physical parameter and converts it into a signal suitable for
processing (e.g. electrical, mechanical, optical) the characteristics of any device or material to
detect the presence of a particular physical quantity. The output of the sensor is a signal which
is converted to a human-readable form like changes in characteristics, changes in resistance,
capacitance, impedance etc.

IOT HARDWARE

What is a Sensor?

There are numerous definitions as to what a sensor is but I would like to define a Sensor as an
input device which provides an output (signal) with respect to a specific physical quantity
(input).

The term “input device” in the definition of a Sensor means that it is part of a bigger system
which provides input to a main control system (like a Processor or a Microcontroller).

Another unique definition of a Sensor is as follows: It is a device that converts signals from one
energy domain to electrical domain. The definition of the Sensor can be better understood if
we take an example in to consideration.
The simplest example of a sensor is an LDR or a Light Dependent Resistor. It is a device, whose
resistance varies according to intensity of light it is subjected to. When the light falling on an
LDR is more, its resistance becomes very less and when the light is less, well, the resistance of
the LDR becomes very high.

We can connect this LDR in a voltage divider (along with other resistor) and check the voltage
drop across the LDR. This voltage can be calibrated to the amount of light falling on the LDR.
Hence, a Light Sensor.

Now that we have seen what a sensor is, we will proceed further with the classification of
Sensors.

Classification of Sensors

There are several classifications of sensors made by different authors and experts. Some are
very simple and some are very complex. The following classification of sensors may already be
used by an expert in the subject but this is a very simple classification of sensors.

In the first classification of the sensors, they are divided in to Active and Passive. Active Sensors
are those which require an external excitation signal or a power signal.

Passive Sensors, on the other hand, do not require any external power signal and directly
generates output response.

The other type of classification is based on the means of detection used in the sensor. Some of
the means of detection are Electric, Biological, Chemical, Radioactive etc.
The next classification is based on conversion phenomenon i.e., the input and the output. Some
of the common conversion phenomena are Photoelectric, Thermoelectric, Electrochemical,
Electromagnetic, Thermooptic, etc.

The final classification of the sensors are Analog and Digital Sensors. Analog Sensors produce an
analog output i.e., a continuous output signal (usually voltage but sometimes other quantities
like Resistance etc.) with respect to the quantity being measured.

Digital Sensors, in contrast to Analog Sensors, work with discrete or digital data. The data in
digital sensors, which is used for conversion and transmission, is digital in nature.

Different Types of Sensors

The following is a list of different types of sensors that are commonly used in various
applications. All these sensors are used for measuring one of the physical properties like
Temperature, Resistance, Capacitance, Conduction, Heat Transfer etc.

1. Temperature Sensor

2. Proximity Sensor

3. Accelerometer

4. IR Sensor (Infrared Sensor)

5. Pressure Sensor

6. Light Sensor

7. Ultrasonic Sensor

8. Smoke, Gas and Alcohol Sensor

9. Touch Sensor

10. Color Sensor

11. Humidity Sensor

12. Position Sensor

13. Magnetic Sensor (Hall Effect Sensor)

14. Microphone (Sound Sensor)

15. Tilt Sensor

 16. Flow and Level Sensor

17. PIR Sensor

18. Touch Sensor

19. Strain and Weight Sensor

More information about the sensors will be added subsequently. A list of projects using the
above sensors is given at the end of the page.

Temperature Sensor

One of the most common and most popular sensors is the Temperature Sensor. A Temperature
Sensor, as the name suggests, senses the temperature i.e., it measures the changes in the
temperature.

There are different types of Temperature Sensors like Temperature Sensor ICs (like LM35,
DS18B20), Thermistors, Thermocouples, RTD (Resistive Temperature Devices), etc.

Temperature Sensors can be analog or digital. In an Analog Temperature Sensor, the changes in
the Temperature correspond to change in its physical property like resistance or voltage. LM35
is a classic Analog Temperature Sensor.

Coming to the Digital Temperature Sensor, the output is a discrete digital value (usually, some
numerical data after converting analog value to digital value). DS18B20 is a simple Digital
Temperature Sensor.
Temperature Sensors are used everywhere like computers, mobile phones, automobiles, air
conditioning systems, industries etc.

A simple project using LM35 (Celsius Scale Temperature Sensor) is implemented in this
project: TEMPERATURE CONTROLLED SYSTEM.

Proximity Sensors

A Proximity Sensor is a non-contact type sensor that detects the presence of an object.
Proximity Sensors can be implemented using different techniques like Optical (like Infrared or
Laser), Sound (Ultrasonic), Magnetic (Hall Effect), Capacitive, etc.

Some of the applications of Proximity Sensors are Mobile Phones, Cars (Parking Sensors),
industries (object alignment), Ground Proximity in Aircrafts, etc.

Proximity Sensor in Reverse Parking is implemented in this Project: REVERSE PARKING SENSOR
CIRCUIT.
Infrared Sensor (IR Sensor)

IR Sensors or Infrared Sensor are light based sensor that are used in various applications like
Proximity and Object Detection. IR Sensors are used as proximity sensors in almost all mobile
phones.

There are two types of Infrared or IR Sensors: Transmissive Type and Reflective Type. In
Transmissive Type IR Sensor, the IR Transmitter (usually an IR LED) and the IR Detector (usually
a Photo Diode) are positioned facing each other so that when an object passes between them,
the sensor detects the object.

The other type of IR Sensor is a Reflective Type IR Sensor. In this, the transmitter and the
detector are positioned adjacent to each other facing the object. When an object comes in
front of the sensor, the infrared light from the IR Transmitter is reflected from the object and is
detected by the IR Receiver and thus the sensor detects the object.

Different applications where IR Sensor is implemented are Mobile Phones, Robots, Industrial
assembly, automobiles etc.

A small project, where IR Sensors are used to turn on street lights: STREET LIGHTS USING IR
SENSORS.
Ultrasonic Sensor

An Ultrasonic Sensor is a non-contact type device that can be used to measure distance as well
as velocity of an object. An Ultrasonic Sensor works based on the properties of the sound waves
with frequency greater than that of the human audible range.

Using the time of flight of the sound wave, an Ultrasonic Sensor can measure the distance of
the object (similar to SONAR). The Doppler Shift property of the sound wave is used to measure
the velocity of an object.

Arduino based Range Finder is a simple project using Ultrasonic Sensor: PORTABLE ULTRASONIC
RANGE METER.

Light Sensor

Sometimes also known as Photo Sensors, Light Sensors are one of the important sensors. A
simple Light Sensor available today is the Light Dependent Resistor or LDR. The property of LDR
is that its resistance is inversely proportional to the intensity of the ambient light i.e., when the
intensity of light increases, its resistance decreases and vise-versa.

By using LDR is a circuit, we can calibrate the changes in its resistance to measure the intensity
of Light. There are two other Light Sensors (or Photo Sensors) which are often used in complex
electronic system design. They are Photo Diode and Photo Transistor. All these are Analog
Sensors.
There are also Digital Light Sensors like BH1750, TSL2561, etc., which can calculate intensity of
light and provide a digital equivalent value.

Check out this simple LIGHT DETECTOR USING LDR project.

Smoke and Gas Sensors

One of the very useful sensors in safety related applications are Smoke and Gas Sensors. Almost
all offices and industries are equipped with several smoke detectors, which detect any smoke
(due to fire) and sound an alarm.

Gas Sensors are more common in laboratories, large scale kitchens and industries. They can
detect different gases like LPG, Propane, Butane, Methane (CH4), etc.

Now-a-days, smoke sensors (which often can detect smoke as well gas) are also installed in
most homes as a safety measure.
The “MQ” series of sensors are a bunch of cheap sensors for detecting CO, CO2, CH4, Alcohol,
Propane, Butane, LPG etc. You can use these sensors to build your own Smoke Sensor
Application.

Check out this SMOKE DETECTOR ALARM CIRCUIT without using Arduino.

Alcohol Sensor

As the name suggests, an Alcohol Sensor detects alcohol. Usually, alcohol sensors are used in
breathalyzer devices, which determine whether a person is drunk or not. Law enforcement
personnel uses breathalyzers to catch drunk-and-drive culprits.

A simple tutorial on HOW TO MAKE ALCOHOL BREATHALYZER CIRCUIT?

Touch Sensor

We do not give much importance to touch sensors but they became an integral part of our life.
Whether you know or not, all touch screen devices (Mobile Phones, Tablets, Laptops, etc.) have
touch sensors in them. Another common application of touch sensor is trackpads in our
laptops.

Touch Sensors, as the name suggests, detect touch of a finger or a stylus. Often touch sensors
are classified into Resistive and Capacitive type. Almost all modern touch sensors are of
Capacitive Types as they are more accurate and have better signal to noise ratio.
If you want to build an application with Touch Sensor, then there are low-cost modules
available and using those touch sensors, you can build TOUCH DIMMER SWITCH CIRCUIT USING
ARDUINO.

Color Sensor

A Color Sensor is an useful device in building color sensing applications in the field of image
processing, color identification, industrial object tracking etc. The TCS3200 is a simple Color
Sensor, which can detect any color and output a square wave proportional to the wavelength of
the detected color.

If you are interested in building a Color Sensor Application, checkout this ARDUINO BASED
COLOR DETECTOR project.
Humidity Sensor

If you see Weather Monitoring Systems, they often provide temperature as well as humidity
data. So, measuring humidity is an important task in many applications and Humidity Sensors
help us in achieving this.

Often all humidity sensors measure relative humidity (a ratio of water content in air to
maximum potential of air to hold water). Since relative humidity is dependent on temperature
of air, almost all Humidity Sensors can also measure Temperature.

Humidity Sensors are classified into Capacitive Type, Resistive Type and Thermal Conductive
Type. DHT11 and DHT22 are two of the frequently used Humidity Sensors in DIY Community
(the former is a resistive type while the latter is capacitive type).

Checkout this tutorial with DHT11 HUMIDITY SENSOR ON ARDUINO.

Tilt Sensor

Often used to detect inclination or orientation, Tilt Sensors are one of the simplest and
inexpensive sensors out there. Previously, tilt sensors are made up of Mercury (and hence they
are sometimes called as Mercury Switches) but most modern tilt sensors contain a roller ball.
What are Actuators?
Actuator is a device that converts the electrical signals into the physical events or
characteristics. It takes the input from the system and gives output to the environment.
For example, motors and heaters are some of the commonly used actuators.

An actuator is a motor that transfers energy from whatever is powering it into motion. This
explanation may sound simplistic, but at heart, that's what it does. Within that simplicity lies a
great deal of utility; the majority of modern devices that involve motion of any kind could not
exist without these components.
Actuators in IoT
An IoT device is made up of a Physical object (“thing”) + Controller (“brain”) + Sensors +
Actuators + Networks (Internet). An actuator is a machine component or system that moves or
controls the mechanism or the system. Sensors in the device sense the environment, then
control signals are generated for the actuators according to the actions needed to perform.

A servo motor is an example of an actuator. They are linear or rotatory actuators, can move to a
given specified angular or linear position. We can use servo motors for IoT applications and
make the motor rotate to 90 degrees, 180 degrees, etc., as per our need.

The following diagram shows what actuators do, the controller directs the actuator based on
the sensor data to do the work.

Working of IoT devices and use of Actuators

The control system acts upon an environment through the actuator. It requires a source of
energy and a control signal. When it receives a control signal, it converts the source of energy
to a mechanical operation. On this basis, on which form of energy it uses, it has different types
given below.

Types of Actuators:
1. Hydraulic Actuators –

A hydraulic actuator uses hydraulic power to perform a mechanical operation. They are
actuated by a cylinder or fluid motor. The mechanical motion is converted to rotary, linear, or
oscillatory motion, according to the need of the IoT device. Ex- construction equipment uses
hydraulic actuators because hydraulic actuators can generate a large amount of force.

Advantages:

 Hydraulic actuators can produce a large magnitude of force and high speed.
 Used in welding, clamping, etc.

 Used for lowering or raising the vehicles in car transport carriers.

Disadvantages :

 Hydraulic fluid leaks can cause efficiency loss and issues of cleaning.

 It is expensive.

 It requires noise reduction equipment, heat exchangers, and high maintenance systems.

2. Pneumatic Actuators –

A pneumatic actuator uses energy formed by vacuum or compressed air at high pressure to
convert into either linear or rotary motion. Example- Used in robotics, use sensors that work
like human fingers by using compressed air.

Advantages :

 They are a low-cost option and are used at extreme temperatures where using air is a safer
option than chemicals.

 They need low maintenance, are durable, and have a long operational life.

 It is very quick in starting and stopping the motion.

Disadvantages :

 Loss of pressure can make it less efficient.

 The air compressor should be running continuously.

 Air can be polluted, and it needs maintenance.

3. Electrical Actuators –

An electric actuator uses electrical energy, is usually actuated by a motor that converts
electrical energy into mechanical torque. An example of an electric actuator is a solenoid based
electric bell.

Advantages :

 It has many applications in various industries as it can automate industrial valves.

 It produces less noise and is safe to use since there are no fluid leakages.

 It can be re-programmed and it provides the highest control precision positioning.

Disadvantages :

 It is expensive.

 It depends a lot on environmental conditions.

4. Thermal/Magnetic Actuators –

These are actuated by thermal or mechanical energy. Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) or Magnetic
Shape-Memory Alloys (MSMAs) are used by these actuators. An example of a thermal/magnetic
actuator can be a piezo motor using SMA.

5. Mechanical Actuators –

A mechanical actuator executes movement by converting rotary motion into linear motion. It
involves pulleys, chains, gears, rails, and other devices to operate. Example – A crankshaft.

 Soft Actuators

 Shape Memory Polymers

 Light Activated Polymers

 With the expanding world of IoT, sensors and actuators will find more usage in commercial
and domestic applications along with the pre-existing use in industry.

Difference between Sensor and Actuator:

SENSOR ACTUATOR

It converts physical characteristics into It converts electrical signals into

electrical signals. physical characteristics.

It takes input from output

It takes input from environment. conditioning unit of system.

It gives output to input conditioning unit

of system. It gives output to environment.

Sensor generated electrical signals. Actuator generates heat or motion.

SENSOR ACTUATOR

It is placed at output port of the

It is placed at input port of the system. system.

It is used to measure the physical It is used to measure the continuous

quantity. and discrete process parameters.

It gives information to the system about It accepts command to perform a

environment. function.

Example: Photo-voltaic cell which

converts light energy into electrical Example: Stepper motor where
energy. electrical energy drives the motor.
 UNIT4 Introduction to Raspberry pi and Arduiano
What Are IoT Devices?
IoT devices are pieces of hardware, such as sensors, actuators, gadgets, appliances, or
machines, that are programmed for certain applications and can transmit data over the
internet or other networks. They can be embedded into other mobile devices, industrial
equipment, environmental sensors, medical devices, and more.

Why IoT Devices?

Increasingly, IoT devices are using AI and machine learning to bring intelligence and
autonomy to systems and processes, such as autonomous driving, industrial smart
manufacturing, medical equipment, and home automation. Many of these devices are
small, power- and cost-constrained microcontroller-based systems. Network bandwidth
and consumer expectations around data privacy and user experience continue to demand
more on-device processing, where data is processed on the IoT endpoint, rather than
using cloud-based approaches.

BUILDING BLOCKS of IoT

Four things form basic building blocks of the IoT system –sensors, processors, gateways,
applications. Each of these nodes has to have its own characteristics in order to form an useful
IoT system.

Simplified block diagram of the basic building blocks of the IoT

Sensors:

 These form the front end of the IoT devices. These are the so-called “Things” of the
system. Their main purpose is to collect data from its surroundings (sensors) or give out
data to its surrounding (actuators).

 These have to be uniquely identifiable devices with a unique IP address so that they can
be easily identifiable over a large network.

 These have to be active in nature which means that they should be able to collect real-
time data. These can either work on their own (autonomous in nature) or can be made
to work by the user depending on their needs (user-controlled).

 Examples of sensors are gas sensor, water quality sensor, moisture sensor, etc.

Processors:

 Processors are the brain of the IoT system. Their main function is to process the data
captured by the sensors and process them so as to extract the valuable data from the
enormous amount of raw data collected. In a word, we can say that it gives intelligence
to the data.

 Processors mostly work on real-time basis and can be easily controlled by applications.
These are also responsible for securing the data – that is performing encryption and
decryption of data.

 Embedded hardware devices, microcontroller, etc are the ones that process the data
because they have processors attached to it.

Gateways:

 Gateways are responsible for routing the processed data and send it to proper locations
for its (data) proper utilization.

 In other words, we can say that gateway helps in to and fro communication of the data.
It provides network connectivity to the data. Network connectivity is essential for any
IoT system to communicate.

 LAN, WAN, PAN, etc are examples of network gateways.

Applications:

 Applications form another end of an IoT system. Applications are essential for proper
utilization of all the data collected.
  These cloud-based applications which are responsible for rendering the effective
meaning to the data collected. Applications are controlled by users and are a delivery
point of particular services.

 Examples of applications are home automation apps, security systems, industrial control
hub, etc.

In Figure 2, the extreme right block forms the application end of the IoT system.

Basic building blocks of IoT

In a nutshell, from the figure we can determine that the information gathered by the sensing
node (end node) is processed first then via connectivity it reaches the embedded processing
nodes that can be any embedded hardware devices and are processed there as well. It then
passes through the connectivity nodes again and reaches the remote cloud-based processing
that can be any software and is sent to the application node for the proper applied usage of the
data collected and also for data analysis via big data.

Raspberry Pi Board Technology

The Raspberry pi is a single computer board with credit card size, that can be used for many
tasks that your computer does, like games, word processing, spreadsheets and also to play HD
video. It was established by the Raspberry pi foundation from the UK. It has been ready for
public consumption since 2012 with the idea of making a low-cost educational microcomputer
for students and children. The main purpose of designing the raspberry pi board is, to
encourage learning, experimentation and innovation for school level students. The raspberry pi
board is a portable and low cost. Maximum of the raspberry pi computers is used in mobile
phones. In the 20th century, the growth of mobile computing technologies is very high, a huge
segment of this being driven by the mobile industries. The 98% of the mobile phones were
using ARM technology.
What is a Raspberry Pi and How Does it Work?
In the 1970s, the information age began. From the largest supercomputers to the smallest
home desktops, this period brought with it the ability to access information at the touch of a
button or click of a mouse. Advances in technology have reduced computers from behemoths
stored in large warehouses to devices you can carry in your pocket or wear on your wrist.
Today you would be hard-pressed to find a business or industry that does not use computer
technology in one form or another.

While the benefits of computer technology are extensive, the disparity it leaves between
classes and economies is hard to ignore. Countries that cannot afford the infrastructure
required to use advancing technology continue to fall behind countries that can. People
without access to basic computing skills fail to keep up with advancements and find themselves
falling behind their peers. Students, young and old, who lack access can find their education
stunted. In short, lack of knowledge of technology, and the inability to navigate the information
superhighway widens the chasm between the haves and the have-nots.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation looks to bridge the gap by providing an economically friendly way
to learn beginning programming languages. In 2012, the Foundation launched Raspberry Pi, a
single-board computer designed to teach programming skills, build hardware projects, do home
automation, and explore industrial applications of computer technology. An economical
computer – $55.00 or less – it runs Linux (a computer operating system) and provides general-
purpose input and output (GPIO) pins that allow the user to control electronic components for
physical computing and exploring the Internet of Things (IoT).

Founded in the United Kingdom in 2009, the Raspberry Pi Foundation promotes the study of
basic computer science in schools with a single-board computer called Raspberry Pi. One of the
founders of Raspberry Pi, Eben Upton, created the first Raspberry Pi in an attempt to solve the
problem of a dwindling student population in computing science at the University of
Cambridge. The simplicity and ease of access led Raspberry Pi to become the UK’s best-selling
personal computer, selling over two million units within two years of production, while
encouraging everyone with interest to study and play. Sales from Raspberry Pi products fund
charitable work that promotes the understanding of computers and the use of technology in
education and developing countries. Raspberry Pi is available throughout the world through the
Foundation’s website and in select countries through approved Pi Resellers.

The operating system for all Raspberry Pi products is Linux. Linux is an open-source operating
system that interfaces between the computer’s hardware and software programs. The
language used with Raspberry Pi is Python – a general-purpose and high-level programming
language used to develop graphical user interface (GUI) applications, websites, and web
applications. One of the benefits of Raspberry Pi is that it is not necessary to have an intimate
knowledge of Linux or Python before beginning a project with Raspberry Pi. In fact, the purpose
of the product is to teach the system and language through engaging projects.
The most basic model is the Raspberry Pi Zero or Raspberry Pi Zero W – the Zero W comes with
WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities while the Zero does not. The basic model provides the user the
opportunity to learn the computer language and explore the Internet of Things (IoT) with
projects designed to keep the learner engaged. The IoT is a system that consists of interrelated
computing devices and mechanical and digital machines providing the ability to transfer data
over a network. Using Raspberry Pi Zero, you can undertake projects such as word clocks,
environmental monitors (temperature, humidity, etc.), airplay speakers, informational displays,
drones, retro games, and selfiebots.

With each project that you complete, you gain knowledge and skills that increase your ability
and confidence. When you outgrow the Zero, move up to the next model. Each version of the
Raspberry Pi integrates new user functions such as USB ports, a media center, and a smart
home hub. Use the Raspberry Pi’s later versions to build your home security system, run dual
HD monitors, and build a home theater PC. The projects and applications for Raspberry Pi are
limited only by your curiosity and desire to learn.

Applications of Raspberry Pi
The raspberry pi boards are used in many applications like Media streamer, Arcade machine,
Tablet computer, Home automation, Carputer, Internet radio, Controlling robots, Cosmic
Computer, Hunting for meteorites, Coffee and also in raspberry pi based projects.

Uses Of Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi is a series of small, single-board computers developed to teach computer science

basics to school students and other people in low-income countries. It became a popular and
easy to experiment tool to develop school projects, hardware programming, robotics, basic
automated machines, circuits, etc. The Uses of Raspberry Pi is a small, quite affordable, and
very much capable hardware device called a credit card size computer.

There are several benefits of using a Raspberry Pi. Please find the below sections, where
Raspberry Pi has been used widely and effectively. Below is the list of the top 10 uses of
Raspberry Pi.
1. Desktop PC

Using Raspberry Pi, the microSD card, and a power supply, a simple desktop can be made. We
would also need an HDMI cable and a suitable display, maybe an old monitor. A USB keyboard
and mouse are also needed.

The new version, which is Raspberry Pi 3, has built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth too. If a different
model is used, compatible USB dongles would be required.

Once everything is set up, and preferred operating system installed (the latest version of
Raspbian), your desktop computer is ready to be used.

2. Wireless print server

This requires installing Samba file-sharing software and CUPS (Common Unix Printing System).
CUPS provide drivers for the printer and administration console.

After this, Pi configuration is needed to ensure a Windows or Mac computers can access the
printer via a network. The printer must have a USB cable.

3. Media Usage

Many estimates suggest one of the main uses of Raspberry Pi is a Kodi media center. Several
Kodi builds have been released as disk images. OSMC and OpenElec are among the most
popular.

Installing Kodi comes with some caveats. It is recommended that we install only safe and legal
add-ons from the official Kodi repositories. Also, a Raspberry Pi running Kodi is vulnerable to a
few security issues. Hence, setting up a VPN to encrypt data is recommended.

4. Game Servers

Raspbian, the default OS of pi comes with a special version of Minecraft game pre-installed.
But, the applications of Raspberry Pi can be used as a game server as well. It is an excellent
game server for Minecraft. If multiple Raspberry Pis are used, making one as a dedicated server,
a great gaming experience can be achieved.

Other multiplayer network games can be set up on the Raspberry Pi.

5. Retro Gaming Machine

Raspberry Pi is ideal as a retro gaming machine. it fits as one of the lightest components of a
machine. Particularly, it’s a version, The Raspberry Pi Zero, that can fit into small spaces for
gaming projects. There are two main options, Recalbox and RetroPie. Other platforms can be
emulated too. Classic MS-DOS PC gaming and Commodore 64 can also be set-up and also many
other popular 16-bit games consoles.
6. Robot Controller

There are many robot-controller Raspberry Pi projects. There is a dedicated robotics package
for Pi, duly powered with the device battery and used to communicate and control robots.

for robots, Pi Zero W can only be used. Zero, a slim line version of the Raspberry Pi, has features
of onboard wireless connectivity suitable for lightweight robots.

It’s quite lighter than the Model B+ boards of version 2 and 3 of pi, and the low profile ensures
it can be placed in an efficient position without having a concern about USB ports.

7. Stop Motion Camera

Using Python and a suitable mount (standard tripod for clay- or toy-based) and the availability
of a well-lit area Stop motion camera can be built. But, this is a time-consuming process. One
needs a good amount of practice to get good results.

8. Time-lapse CameraCCombiningge

The Raspberry Pi camera modulandfferent script creates another use that captures movies. This
can be achieved by taking single frames with a time delay. Also needed is, perhaps a portable
battery solution, and a tripod can be used. A smartphone tripod is most preferred to ensure the
device remains sturdy.

9. FM Radio Station

Raspberry Pi can also be used to broadcast on FM radio. Pi can broadcast only over a short-
range. A portable battery and soldering skills may be required here. Any audio which needs to
broadcast will need to be loaded beforehand to the microSD card.

10. Web Servers

Another great application of Raspberry Pi is to create a web server out of it. What this means is
that it can be configured to host a website much like any other server. It can host blogs too.
First of all, the right software needs to be installed and that is Apache and its dependent
libraries. A full LAMP stack can also be installed with PHP, MySQL, and Apache too. Setting up
FTP is also helpful.

Once all these steps as mentioned are completed, HTML files can be saved into the /www/
directory, and the webserver is ready to be used. Specific web software like WordPress can also
be used once the server setup is complete.
Parts of the Raspberry Pi

GPIO

GPIO is arguably the most important feature of the Raspberry Pi and is the equivalent of GPIO
pins on the Arduino. These pins can be used in programs to read electrical signals from circuits
as well as provide electrical signals for controlling circuits. Be very careful when using GPIO as
they are easily damaged and use 3.3V logic. If you intend to control external devices that draw
more than 20mA current, you should use a driver circuit (see 3.3 connecting I/O). This includes
devices such as relays, inductors, and high brightness LEDs.

DSI Display Port

The DSI display port allows the Raspberry Pi to connect to a serial display similar to those used
in tablets. Such display modules are available with touch controls and in common sizes such as
7 inches.

CSI Camera Port

The CSI camera port is a connector that allows the Raspberry Pi to connect to a Raspberry Pi
camera module. Generic web cameras will not work as they commonly have only a USB
connector.
MicroSD Slot

This slot is used to house the microSD card that holds the Raspberry Pi operating system. The
microSD card does not come with the Pi. This SD card also holds all files, folders, documents,
and pictures created by the user. It is essentially the hard drive of the computer.

HDMI / USB / Network

These slots are used to connect the Pi to an HDMI screen, USB devices such as mice and
keyboards, and to an ethernet connection for internet access. However, the Raspberry Pi 3
comes with integrated Wi-Fi so there is often no need for the ethernet connector.

Micro USB Power

Power to the Raspberry Pi can be provided using either a micro USB lead to the micro USB
connector (recommended) or 5V can be directly fed into the 5V GPIO pin.

What is Arduino?
Arduino is an open-source electronics platform based on easy-to-use hardware and
software. Arduino boards are able to read inputs - light on a sensor, a finger on a button, or a
Twitter message - and turn it into an output - activating a motor, turning on an LED, publishing
something online. You can tell your board what to do by sending a set of instructions to the
microcontroller on the board. To do so you use the Arduino programming language (based
on Wiring), and the Arduino Software (IDE), based on Processing.

Over the years Arduino has been the brain of thousands of projects, from everyday objects to
complex scientific instruments. A worldwide community of makers - students, hobbyists, artists,
programmers, and professionals - has gathered around this open-source platform, their
contributions have added up to an incredible amount of accessible knowledge that can be of
great help to novices and experts alike.

Arduino was born at the Ivrea Interaction Design Institute as an easy tool for fast prototyping,
aimed at students without a background in electronics and programming. As soon as it reached
a wider community, the Arduino board started changing to adapt to new needs and challenges,
differentiating its offer from simple 8-bit boards to products for IoT applications, wearable, 3D
printing, and embedded environments. All Arduino boards are completely open-source,
empowering users to build them independently and eventually adapt them to their particular
needs. The software, too, is open-source, and it is growing through the contributions of users
worldwide.

Why Arduino?
Thanks to its simple and accessible user experience, Arduino has been used in thousands of
different projects and applications. The Arduino software is easy-to-use for beginners, yet
flexible enough for advanced users. It runs on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Teachers and students
use it to build low-cost scientific instruments, to prove chemistry and physics principles, or to
get started with programming and robotics. Designers and architects build interactive
prototypes, musicians and artists use it for installations and to experiment with new musical
instruments. Makers, of course, use it to build many of the projects exhibited at the Maker
Faire, for example. Arduino is a key tool to learn new things. Anyone - children, hobbyists,
artists, programmers - can start tinkering just following the step-by-step instructions of a kit, or
sharing ideas online with other members of the Arduino community.

There are many other microcontrollers and microcontroller platforms available for physical
computing. Parallax Basic Stamp, Netmedia's BX-24, Phidgets, MIT's Handyboard, and many
others offer similar functionality. All of these tools take the messy details of microcontroller
programming and wrap it up in an easy-to-use package. Arduino also simplifies the process of
working with microcontrollers, but it offers some advantage for teachers, students, and
interested amateurs over other systems:

 Inexpensive - Arduino boards are relatively inexpensive compared to other

microcontroller platforms. The least expensive version of the Arduino module can be
assembled by hand, and even the pre-assembled Arduino modules cost less than $50

 Cross-platform - The Arduino Software (IDE) runs on Windows, Macintosh OSX, and
Linux operating systems. Most microcontroller systems are limited to Windows.

 Simple, clear programming environment - The Arduino Software (IDE) is easy-to-use for
beginners, yet flexible enough for advanced users to take advantage of as well. For
teachers, it's conveniently based on the Processing programming environment, so
students learning to program in that environment will be familiar with how the Arduino
IDE works.

 Open source and extensible software - The Arduino software is published as open-
source tools, available for extension by experienced programmers. The language can be
expanded through C++ libraries, and people wanting to understand the technical details
can make the leap from Arduino to the AVR C programming language on which it's
based. Similarly, you can add AVR-C code directly into your Arduino programs if you
want to.

 Open source and extensible hardware - The plans of the Arduino boards are published
under a Creative Commons license, so experienced circuit designers can make their own
version of the module, extending it and improving it. Even relatively inexperienced users
can build the breadboard version of the module in order to understand how it works
and save money.

Basics of Arduino UNO

Let's have a look at the basic details of Arduino UNO:
  Arduino UNO is a Microcontroller board designed by Arduino.cc in Italy.

 It used an Atmega328 Microcontroller which acts as the brain of this board.

 Arduino Bootloader is installed on Atmega328 which makes it capable to work with

Arduino Programming.

 Arduino is an open-source platform so it has a lot of support from third-party

developers.

 Anyone can design its Libraries for different sensors and modules.

Arduino Applications
Below are the Arduino Applications:

Home Automation

This application makes use of the Arduino Uno board, Bluetooth interface for connectivity, and
smartphones. Software loaded boards are connected to the home devices like lamps, A/C, TV,
Refrigerator, and Bluetooth software is interfaced with the board. The app loaded in the
smartphone talk to the processor through Bluetooth connectivity and inputs from the phone
are used to control the operation of the devices.

Operations like switch on, switch off, increasing or decreasing the intensity, volume, and other
operating of parameters of these devices. Remote monitoring and operation is also enabled.
These applications simplify the operation of household gadgets and enables better control.

Public Utility Automation

Applications to manage public utilities like street lighting, Dynamic traffic management systems
are being implemented.

Street lighting Street lights are fitted with Arduino boards and sensors. The microcontroller is
programmed to read the inputs from the signal sent by the sensor on the light and temperature
change and dynamically change the voltage supplied to the lights and control the intensity of
the light. This system can be used to switch on and switch off the light also. Dynamic traffic
Management Arduino controller along with infra-red sensors helps in managing the traffic
dynamically. Input from the sensor helps the controller to measure the volume of traffic and
accordingly control the timing of signals as per the traffic flow and its direction.

IoT

Poka-yoke This system suggests the right component be fitted at any stage in the assembly line.
This system senses the product that is being assembled and refers ERP system and finds out the
component to be fitted at that stage and accordingly illuminates the light of the compartment
of that component. The operator picks up that component where the light glows and thus
picking the right component is ensured and mistake-proofing is ensured. Arduino board based
on the input from the central server send a signal to right bulb in the circuit and illuminates it.

Production counting Sensor placed in the conveyor is activated when the product being
assembled moved from one stage to the next stage. Arduino board takes the signal from the
sensor and adds to the count and sends the data back to the central server.

Difference between Arduino and Raspberry Pi

There are a wide variety of controller boards that we can use for our hardware projects. The
two most popular among them are: Arduino and Raspberry Pi.

Arduino is based on the ATmega family and has a relatively simple design and software
structure. Raspberry Pi, basically is a single-board computer. Both of them have a CPU which
executes the instructions, timers, memory and I/O pins. The key distinction between the two is
that Arduino tends to have a strong I/O capability which drives external hardware directly.
Whereas Raspberry Pi has a weak I/O which requires transistors to drive the hardware.

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S
No. Arduino Raspberry Pi

Control unit of Arduino is from While control unit of Raspberry Pi is from ARM
1. Atmega family. family.

Arduino is based on a
2. microcontroller. While Raspberry Pi is based on a microprocessor.

It is designed to control the While Raspberry Pi computes data and produces

electrical components connected to valuable outputs, and controls components in a
3. the circuit board in a system. system based on the outcome of its computation.

Arduino boards have a simple While Raspberry Pi boards have a complex

4. hardware and software structure. architecture of hardware and software.
S
No. Arduino Raspberry Pi

5. CPU architecture: 8 bit. CPU architecture: 64 bit.

6. It uses very less RAM, 2 kB. While Raspberry Pi requires more RAM, 1 GB.

It clocks a processing speed of 16 While Raspberry Pi clocks a processing speed of

7. MHz. 1.4 GHz.

8. It is cheaper in cost. While Raspberry Pi is expensive.

It has a higher I/O current drive While Raspberry Pi has a lower I/O current drive
9. strength. strength.

It consumes about 200 MW of

10. power. While it consumes about 700 MW of power.
 UNIT 5 Case Study
IoT for Smart Cities: Use Cases and Implementation Strategies

The UN predicts that by 2050, the world’s urban population is likely to double and reach the
point of nearly 6.7 million people. As the number of urban residents grows, cities face new
opportunities… And challenges. To prevent environmental deterioration, avoid sanitation
problems, mitigate traffic congestion, and thwart urban crime, municipalities turn to the
Internet of Things (IoT).

IoT has the potential to tame the pressure of urbanization, create new experience for city
residents, and make day-to-day living more comfortable and secure.

In this article, we will share our IoT consulting experience and shed light on the smart city
applications, present an optimal approach to the implementation of smart city solutions, as
well as explore the peculiarities of rolling out IoT solutions in cities of different sizes.

IoT use cases for smart cities

IoT-enabled smart city use cases span multiple areas: from contributing to a healthier
environment and improving traffic to enhancing public safety and optimizing street lighting.
Below, we provide an overview of the most popular use cases that are already implemented in
smart cities across the globe.
Road traffic

Smart cities ensure that their citizens get from point A to point B as safely and efficiently as
possible. To achieve this, municipalities turn to IoT development and implement smart traffic
solutions.

Smart traffic solutions use different types of sensors, as well as fetch GPS data from drivers’
smart phones to determine the number, location and the speed of vehicles. At the same time,
smart traffic lights connected to a cloud management platform allow monitoring green light
timings and automatically alter the lights based on current traffic situation to prevent
congestion. Additionally, using historical data, smart solutions for traffic management can
predict where the traffic could go and take measures to prevent potential congestion.

For example, being one of the most traffic-affected cities in the world, Los Angeles has
implemented a smart traffic solution to control traffic flow. Road-surface sensors and closed-
circuit television cameras send real-time updates about the traffic flow to a central traffic
management platform. The platform analyzes the data and notifies the platform users of
congestion and traffic signal malfunctions via desktop user apps. Additionally, the city is
deploying a network of smart controllers to automatically make second-by-second traffic lights
adjustments, reacting to changing traffic conditions in real time.

Smart parking

With the help of GPS data from drivers’ smartphones (or road-surface sensors embedded in the
ground on parking spots), smart parking solutions determine whether the parking spots are
occupied or available and create a real-time parking map. When the closest parking spot
becomes free, drivers receive a notification and use the map on their phone to find a parking
spot faster and easier instead of blindly driving around.

Public transport

The data from IoT sensors can help to reveal patterns of how citizens use transport. Public
transportation operators can use this data to enhance traveling experience, achieve a higher
level of safety and punctuality. To carry out a more sophisticated analysis, smart public
transport solutions can combine multiple sources, such as ticket sales and traffic information.

In London, for instance, some train operators predict the loading of train passenger cars on
their trips in and out of the city. They combine the data from ticket sales, movement sensors,
and CCTV cameras installed along the platform. Analyzing this data, train operators can predict
how each car will load up with passengers. When a train comes into a station, train operators
encourage passengers to spread along the train to maximize the loading. By maximizing the
capacity use, train operators avoid train delays.
Utilities

IoT-equipped smart cities allow citizens to save money by giving them more control over their
home utilities. IoT enables different approaches to smart utilities:

 Smart meters & billing

With a network of smart meters, municipalities can provide citizens with cost-effective
connectivity to utilities companies’ IT systems. Now, smart connected meters can send data
directly to a public utility over a telecom network, providing it with reliable meter readings.
Smart metering allows utilities companies to bill accurately for the amount of water, energy
and gas consumed by each household.

 Revealing consumption patterns

A network of smart meters enables utilities companies to gain greater visibility and see how
their customers consume energy and water. With a network of smart meters, utilities
companies can monitor demand in real time and redirect resources as necessary or encourage
consumers to use less energy or water at times of shortage.

 Remote monitoring

IoT smart city solutions can also provide citizens with utility management services. These
services allow citizens to use their smart meters to track and control their usage remotely. For
instance, a householder can turn off their home central heating using a mobile phone.
Additionally, if a problem (e.g., a water leakage) occurs, utilities companies can notify
householders and send specialists to fix it.

Street lighting

IoT-based smart cities make maintenance and control of street lamps more straightforward and
cost-effective. Equipping streetlights with sensors and connecting them to a cloud management
solution helps to adapt lighting schedule to the lighting zone.

Smart lighting solutions gather data on illuminance, movement of people and vehicles, and
combine it with historical and contextual data (e.g., special events, public transport schedule,
time of day and year, etc.) and analyze it to improve the lighting schedule. As a result, a smart
lighting solution “tells” a streetlight to dim, brighten, switch on or switch off the lights based on
the outer conditions.

For instance, when pedestrians cross the road, the lights around the crossings can switch to a
brighter setting; when a bus is expected to arrive at a bus stop, the streetlights around it can be
automatically set brighter than those further away, etc.
Waste management

Most waste collection operators’ empty containers according to predefined schedules. This is
not a very efficient approach since it leads to the unproductive use of waste containers and
unnecessary fuel consumption by waste collecting trucks.

IoT-enabled smart city solutions help to optimize waste collecting schedules by tracking waste
levels, as well as providing route optimization and operational analytics.

Each waste container gets a sensor that gathers the data about the level of the waste in a
container. Once it is close to a certain threshold, the waste management solution receives a
sensor record, processes it, and sends a notification to a truck driver’s mobile app. Thus, the
truck driver empties a full container, avoiding emptying half-full ones.

Environment

IoT-driven smart city solutions allow tracking parameters critical for a healthy environment in
order to maintain them at an optimal level. For example, to monitor water quality, a city can
deploy a network of sensors across the water grid and connect them to a cloud management
platform. Sensors measure pH level, the amount of dissolved oxygen and dissolved ions. If
leakage occurs and the chemical composition of water changes, the cloud platform triggers an
output defined by the users. For example, if a Nitrate (NO3-) level exceeds 1 mg/L, a water
quality management solution alerts maintenance teams of contamination and automatically
creates a case for field workers, who then start fixing the issue.

Another use case is monitoring air quality. For that, a network of sensors is deployed along busy
roads and around plants. Sensors gather data on the amount of CO, nitrogen, and sulfur oxides,
while the central cloud platform analyzes and visualizes sensor readings, so that platform users
can view the map of air quality and use this data to point out areas where air pollution is critical
and work out recommendations for citizens.

Public safety

For enhancing public safety, IoT-based smart city technologies offer real-time monitoring,
analytics, and decision-making tools. Combining data from acoustic sensors and CCTV cameras
deployed throughout the city with the data from social media feed and analyzing it, public
safety solutions can predict potential crime scenes. This will allow the police to stop potential
perpetrators or successfully track them.

For example, more than 90 cities across the United States use a gunshot detection solution. The
solution uses connected microphones installed throughout a city. The data from microphones
passes over to the cloud platform, which analyzes the sounds and detects a gunshot. The
platform measures the time it took for the sound to reach the microphone and estimates the
location of the gun. When the gunshot and its location are identified, cloud software alerts the
police via a mobile app.
Iterative approach to implementing smart city solutions

The range of smart city applications is highly diverse. What they have in common is the
approach to implementation. Whether municipalities plan to automate waste collection or
improve street lighting, they should start with the foundation – a basic smart city platform. If a
municipality prefers to expand the range of smart city services in future, it will be possible to
upgrade the existing architecture with new tools and technologies without having to rebuild it.

Here is a six-step implementation model to follow for creating an efficient and scalable IoT
architecture for a smart city.

Stage 1: basic IoT-based smart city platform

To be able to scale, smart city implementation should start with designing a basic architecture –
it will serve as a springboard for future enhancements and allow adding new services without
losing functional performance. A basic IoT solution for smart cities includes four components:

 The network of smart things

A smart city – as any IoT system – uses smart things equipped with sensors and actuators. The
immediate goal of sensors is to collect data and pass it to a central cloud management
platform. Actuators allow devices to act - alter the lights, restrict the flow of water to the pipe
with leakage, etc.

 Gateways

Any IoT system comprises two parts – a “tangible” part of IoT devices and network nodes and a
cloud part. The data cannot simply pass from one part to the other. There must be doors – field
gateways. Field gateways facilitate data gathering and compression by preprocessing and
filtering data before moving it to the cloud. The cloud gateway ensures secure data
transmission between field gateways and the cloud part of a smart city solution.

 Data lake

The main purpose of a data lake is to store data. Data lakes preserve data in its raw state. When
the data is needed for meaningful insights, it’s extracted and passed over to the big data
warehouse.

 Big data warehouse

A big data warehouse is a single data repository. Unlike data lakes, it contains only structured
data. Once the value of data has been defined, it’s extracted, transformed and loaded into the
big data warehouse. Moreover, it stores contextual information about connected things, e.g.,
when sensors were installed, as well as the commands sent to devices’ actuators by control
applications.
Stage 2: Monitoring and basic analytics

With data analytics, it is possible to monitor devices’ environment and set rules for control
applications (we cover them at stage 4) to carry out a particular task.

For example, analyzing the data from soil moisture sensors deployed across a smart park, cities
can set rules for the electronic valves to close or open based on the identified moisture level.
The data collected with sensors can be visualized on a single platform dashboard, allowing
users to know the current state of each park zone.

Stage 3: Deep analytics

Processing IoT-generated data, city administrations can go beyond monitoring & basic analytics
and identify patterns and hidden correlations in sensor data. Data analytics uses advanced
techniques like machine learning (ML) and statistical analysis. ML algorithms analyze historical
sensor data stored in the big data warehouse to identify trends and create predictive models
based on them. The models are used by control applications that send commands to IoT
devices’ actuators. Here is how it applies in practice.

Unlike a traditional traffic light that is programmed to display a particular signal for a definite
period, a smart traffic light can adapt signal timings to the traffic scenario. ML algorithms are
applied to historical sensor data to reveal traffic patterns and adjust signal timings, helping to
improve average vehicle speed and avoid congestions.

Stage 4: Smart control

Control applications ensure better automation of smart city objects by sending commands to
their actuators. Basically, they “tell” actuators what to do to solve a particular task. There
are rule-based and ML-based control applications. Rules for rule-based control applications are
defined manually, while ML-based control applications use models created by ML algorithms.
These models are identified based on data analysis; they are tested, approved and regularly
updated.

Stage 5: Instant interacting with citizens via user applications

Along with the possibility of automated control, there should always be an option for users to
influence the behavior of smart city applications (for example, in case of emergency). This task
is carried out by user applications.

User applications allow citizens to connect to the central smart city management platform to
monitor and control IoT devices, as well as receive notifications and alerts. For example, using
GPS data from drivers’ smartphones, a smart traffic management solution identifies a traffic
jam. To prevent even bigger congestion, the solution automatically sends a notification to the
drivers in the area, encouraging them to take a different route.

At the same time, employees at a traffic control center who use a desktop user app receive a
‘congestion alert.’ To relieve the congestion and re-route part of the traffic, they send a
command to the traffic lights’ actuators to alter the signals.

Stage 6: Integrating several solutions

Achieving “smartness” is not a one-time action – it is a continuous process. Implementing IoT-

based smart city solutions today, municipalities should think of services they might like to
implement tomorrow. It implies not only increasing the number of sensors but, more
importantly, the number of functions. Let’s illustrate this functional scalability with the example
of a smart city solution for traffic monitoring.

A city deploys a traffic management solution to detect traffic jams in real time and manage
traffic lights to reduce traffic in the areas with intensive traffic. After some time, the city
decides to ensure city traffic doesn’t harm the environment and integrates the traffic
management solution with a smart air quality monitoring solution. Cross-solution integration
allows controlling both traffic and air quality in the city dynamically.

For that, traffic lights or street lights along the roads can be equipped with sensors that monitor
air quality. Sensors measure the amount of CO, NO, and NO 2 in the air and pass data records to
a central air quality management platform for processing. If the amount of harmful gases in the
air is critical, control applications apply rules or use models to take an output action, e.g., ‘alter
traffic lights.’ Before that, there is a need to make sure that altering traffic lights won’t cause
accidents or blockages in other areas. It is possible due to the integration of the traffic
management solution to the air quality management solution. The traffic management
platform performs real-time analysis and identifies if it is possible to alter the traffic lights. If
altering the lights is acceptable, control applications send a command to the traffic lights’
actuators, which execute the command.
Applying an iterative approach helps municipalities to reduce implementation costs, get a faster
pay-off and make the benefits of smart solutions visible for citizens sooner.

Adapting IoT implementation strategy to the city size

Iterative approach can be leveraged in cities of different sizes. In larger ones, it helps to deal
with the scale and complexity of implementation; in smaller ones, it helps to reduce
investments in smart solutions and use constrained infrastructure resources more reasonably.
However, starting a smart project in a smaller city, municipalities have some more points to
consider.

On the way to smartness, midsized and small cities face many barriers, including budgetary and
procurement shortages, limited resources for public services, under-resourced IT infrastructure,
etc. However, it doesn’t mean a smaller city cannot be a smart city.
Starting a smart initiative in a city of medium or small size, it makes sense to begin with the
projects that do not require huge investments and deliver tangible return on investments, such
as smart parking or waste management, and use the established infrastructure to implement
new services.

For example, the town of Vail, CO has less than 6,000 inhabitants but boasts an extensive smart
infrastructure. The town started smart city development with connected streetlights. Later,
they used the established infrastructure to broaden the range of services and topped it with
smart parking and irrigation systems.

To determine which applications are a good fit for smaller cities, we’ve analyzed them by the
volume of investments, required infrastructure, pay-off period, the visibility of benefits for
citizens and came up with the following table:

Another non-trivial way to enhance the affordability and accessibility of smart applications is
sharing a common platform with a larger city. The cloud nature of IoT-enabled smart city
solutions is suitable for that. This way, smart city solutions of both large and smaller smart cities
are connected to and managed via a single cloud platform. By sharing the platform based on
open data, several smart cities form a common urban ecosystem. One of the examples of such
sharing is the Iberian Smart Cities Network, which currently includes 111 cities in Portugal and
Spain. The network comprises cities of different sizes, which cooperate in multiple areas
including smart energy, mobility, environment, and transport.
Let’s sum it up, IoT helps cities connect and manage multiple infrastructure and public services.
From smart lighting and road traffic to connected public transport and waste management –
the range of use cases is highly diverse. What they have in common is the outcomes. Applying
IoT solutions leads to reduced costs for energy, optimized use of natural resources, safer cities,
and a healthier environment.

However, to enjoy these benefits, municipalities should take a consistent approach to design a
functional and scalable smart city architecture. Well-designed, it will allow to reduce
investments in IoT development and hasten the implementation of smart city solutions, still
leaving space for expansion.

IoT for smart home—a case study

IoT is the next step in the evolution of the internet and is being used in about everything you can
think of. This project aimed to scope out use cases if LG were to start its own IoT wave for smart
homes.

The Process

Use Cases:

• A new wave of connected appliances will enable better user experience, proactive alerts,
and even safety notifications.

• Water and air treatment systems at home, their performance data, customized alerts on
each device performance, automated consumable ordering and even automatically adjusts to
your water usage patterns.

• Adding connectivity to fire safety devices can provide homeowners the ability to monitor
appliances remotely and even send alerts to friends and neighbours in the case of an emergency.

Research:

For the research part, I googled a lot and tried to understand and grab as much I could about
IoT’s and its potential users.

“User-centered design means working with your users all throughout the project.”— Don
Norman

For personas, I interviewed various potential people at my workplace and at home.

Quick Summary :- Read the tutorial blog on how to implement Home Automation using IoT. It
covers the software, hardware, sensors, protocols, architecture and platforms. Applications of
IoT-enabled connectivity are home security, air quality monitoring, infotainment delivery, smart
lock etc.

Case Study 2: Home Automation Using the Internet of Things (IoT)

What really would compel someone to actually develop a product which is a complete IoT-
based home automation system? Could it be the need to improve the safety of your home,
could it be the desire to live a Jetson-like life that millennials always dreamt of.

It is difficult to say, often, it is even more difficult to visualize the technology that is required to
build a home automation platform.

Due to the complexity introduced by software, hardware and networking ecosystems, it

becomes extremely important to learn, understand and utilize the right home automation
technology for your smart home product.

We hope to address some of the concerns with this article.

Home automation has three major parts:

 Hardware

 Software/Apps

 Communication protocols

Each of these parts is equally important in building a truly smart home experience for your
customers. Having the right hardware enables the ability to develop your IoT prototype
iteratively and respond to technology pivots with ease.

A protocol selected with the right testing and careful consideration helps your avoiding
performance bottlenecks that otherwise would restrict the technology and device integration
capabilities with sensors and IoT gateways.

Another important consideration is the firmware that resides in your hardware managing your
data, managing data transfer, firmware OTA updates and performing other critical operations
to make things talk.

Applications of home automation

Rebuilding consumer expectations, home automation has been projected to target wide array
applications for the new digital consumer. Some of the areas where consumers can expect to
see home automation led IoT-enabled connectivity are:

 Lighting control

 HVAC

 Lawn/Gardening management

 Smart Home Appliances

 Improved Home safety and security

 Home air quality and water quality monitoring

 Natural Language-based voice assistants

 Better Infotainment delivery

 AI-driven digital experiences

 Smart Switches

 Smart Locks
  Smart Energy Meters

The list is still not exhaustive and will evolve over the time to accommodate new IoT use cases.

Now that you are familiar with home automation applications, let’s have a detailed look at
what components are involved in building a typical home automation prototype.

Home automation components

We have talked about them before, but, let’s clearly separate them into components that
would finally help you build a realistic model of what major components are involved in
building a smart home. The major components can be broken into:

 IoT Sensors

 IoT Gateways

 IoT Protocols

 IoT Firmware

 IoT Cloud and Databases

 IoT Middleware (if required)

IoT sensors involved in home automation are in thousands, and there are hundreds of home
automation gateways as well. Most of the firmware is either written in C, Python, Node.Js, or
any other programming language.

The biggest players in IoT cloud can be divided into a platform as a service (PaaS) and
infrastructure as a service (LaaS).

Major IoT platform as a service provider:

 AWS IoT

 Azure IoT

 Thingworx

 Ubidots

 Thingspeak

 Carriots

 Konekt
  TempoIQ

 Xively

 IBM Bluemix

Characteristics of IoT platforms

Again, these platforms are extremely divided over the IoT application and security-related
features that they provide. A few of these platforms are open source.

Let’s have a look at what you should expect from a typical IoT platform:

 Device security and authentication

 Message brokers and message queuing

 Device administration

 Support towards protocols like CoAP, MQTT, HTTP

 Data collection, visualization, and simple analysis capabilities

 Integrability with other web services

 Horizontal and vertical scalability

 WebSocket APIs for real time for real-time information flow

Apart from what we mentioned above, more and more platform builders are open sourcing
their libraries to developers. Take for example the Dallas temperature library for DS18B20 for
Arduino was quickly ported because of open source development to a new version that helped
developers to integrate DS18B20 with Linkit One. Understanding these things become crucial as
IoT tends to evolve continuously and having an equally responsive platform makes it business
safe to proceed.

Let’s now deeply evaluate each of these components, starting with IoT sensors

Home Automation Sensors

There are probably thousands of such sensors out there that can be a part of this list. Since this
is an introduction towards smart home technology, we will keep it brief. We will break down
IoT sensors for home automation by their sensing capabilities:

 Temperature sensors

 Lux sensors
  Water level sensors

 Air composition sensors

 Video cameras for surveillance

 Voice/Sound sensors

 Pressure sensors

 Humidity sensors

 Accelerometers

 Infrared sensors

 Vibration’s sensors

 Ultrasonic sensors

Depending upon what you need you may use one or many of these to build a truly smart home
IoT product. Let’s have a look at some of the most commonly used home automation sensors.

Temperature sensors

The market is full of them, but the famous temperature sensors are DHT11/22, DS18B20, LM35
and MSP430 series from TI. MSP430 series is more accurate than the rest but at the same time
is one of the most expensive for prototyping or initial product testing purposes. MSP430 tops
all temperature sensors as the precision and battery consumption is minimum with them.

MSP430 tops all temperature sensors as the precision and battery consumption is minimum
with them.

DHT11 has a very restricted temperature range and suffers from accuracy issues. DHT22, on the
other hand, is a little bit more accurate but still, doesn’t make it as the preference.

DS18B20’s, on the other hand, are more accurate, as opposed to digital temperature sensors
like DHT22 and 11, Dallas temperature sensors are analog and can be extremely accurate down
to 0.5 degrees.
Take note that often the temperatures that you directly sense from these sensors may not be
very accurate and you would occasionally see 1000 F or greater values no matter what you are
doing.

There’s an entire logic that goes around building temperature sensors, that we will address in
another blog post.

Lux Sensors

Lux sensors measure the luminosity and can be used to trigger various functions range from
cross-validating movements to turn the lights on if it becomes too dark. Some of the most
popular light sensors are TSL2591 and BH1750.

Recent tests to include TSL2591 and BH1750 into low-powered IoT devices have found them to
be working fairly good for most of the use cases.

Here’s a study was done by Robert and Tomas that shows how these two compare against a
spectrometer and a photodiode.
To get a good idea of whether these two sensors would suffice your needs we would suggest
illuminance tests followed by normalization of the data to observe deviations under various
situations.

Water level sensors for Home Automation

While building your prototype you may consider a solid state eTape liquid level sensor, or like
others who just use an HC-SR04 ultrasonic sensor to measure the water level sensor.
On the other hand, in other cases where those two don’t suffice, one has to utilize something
that can deliver a much higher performance.

Float level sensors and other ICs like LM1830 offers a more precise measurement capability to
IoT developers. Although, they are substantially much more expensive than others.

Air composition sensors

There are a couple of specific sensors that are used by developers to measure specific
components in the air:

 CO monitoring by MiCS-5525

 MQ-8 to measure Hydrogen gas levels

 MiCS-2714 to measure nitrogen oxide

 MQ135 to sense hazardous gas levels (NH3, NOx, Alcohol, Benzene, smoke, CO2

Most of these are sensors have a heating time, which also means that they require a certain
time before they actually start delivering accurate values.

These sensors mainly rely on their surface to detect gas components. When they initially start
sensing, there’s always something that’s there on their surface, some sort of deposition that
requires some heating to go away.

Hence, after the surface gets heated enough true values start to show up.
Video cameras for surveillance and analytics

A range of webcams and cameras specific to Hardware development kits are usually used in
such scenarios. Hardware with USB ports offers to integrate and camera module to build
functionalities.

But, utilizing USB ports in not very efficient, especially in the case of real-time video transfer or
any kind of video processing.

Take RaspberryPi for example, it comes with a camera module (Pi cam) that connects using a
flex connector directly to the board without using the USB port. This makes the Pi cam
extremely efficient.

Sound detection for Home Automation

Sound detection plays a vital role from monitoring babies to turning on and off lights
automatically to automatically detecting your dog’s sound at the door and opening it up for
them.

Some commonly used sensors for sound detection includes SEN-12462 and EasyVR Shield for
rapid prototyping.

These sensors aren’t as good as industrial grade sensors like those from 3DSignals which can
detect even ultra-low levels of noise and fine tune between various noise levels to build even
machine break up patterns.

Humidity sensors for Home Automation

These sensors bring the capability of sensing humidity/RH levels in air for smart homes. The
accuracy and sensing precision depend a lot on multiple factors including the overall sensor
design and placement.

But certain sensors like DHT22 and 11 built for rapid prototyping would always perform poorly
when compared to high-quality sensors like HIH6100 and Dig RH.

While building a product to sense humidity levels, ensure that there’s no localized layer of
humidity that is obscuring the actual results. Also, keep into consideration that in certain small
spaces, the humidity might be too high at one end as compared to the others.

When you look at free and open spaces where the air components can move much freely, the
distribution around the sensor can be expected to be uniform and subsequently would require
very less number of corrective actions for the right calibration.
Home Automation Protocols

One of the most important parts of building a home automation product is to think about
protocols, protocols that your device would use to communicate to gateways, servers, and
sensors. A few years ago, the only way to do so was by either using Bluetooth, wifi or GSM. But
due to added expenses on cellular sim cards, and low performance of Wifi, most such solutions
didn’t work.

A few years ago, the only way to do so was by either using Bluetooth, wifi or GSM. But due to
added expenses on cellular sim cards, and low performance of Wifi, most such solutions didn’t
work.

Bluetooth survived and later evolved as Bluetooth Smart or Bluetooth low energy. This helped
bring a lot of connectivity in the “mobile server powered economy”, in this essentially your
phone would act as a middleware to fetch data from BLE powered sensors and sent it over to
the internet.

When looking at the major home automation protocols, the following tops the list:

 Bluetooth low energy or Bluetooth Smart: Wireless protocol with mesh capabilities,
security, data encryption algorithms and much more. Ideal for IoT-based products for
smart homes.

 Zigbee: Low cost, mesh networked and low power radio frequency-based protocol for
IoT. Different Zigbee versions don’t talk to each other.

 X10: A legacy protocol that utilizes powerline wiring for signaling and control

 Insteon: Communicates with devices both wirelessly and with wires

 Z-wave: Specializes in home automation with an emphasis on security

 Wifi: Needs no explanation

 UPB: Uses existing power lines installed in a home, reduces costs

 Thread: A royalty-free protocol for smart home automation, uses a 6lowpan

 ANT: An ultra-low power protocol helping developers build low-powered sensors with a
mesh distribution capabilities.

 6lowpan
Home Automation: Which protocol is the best?

While there are some protocols that clearly offer much more than others, but it is always
important to start from your smart home development needs and then move towards
narrowing down the solutions.

The commonly preferred protocols are Bluetooth low energy, Z-wave, Zigbee, and Thread. The
protocol selection can now be narrowed down by the following factors:

 Ability to perform identity verification

 Quality of sensor networks

 Data transfer rate

 Security level

 Network topology required

 Density of objects around

 Effective Distance to be covered

Home Automation Architecture

This architecture supports the following considerations for home automation solutions:

 End to end security mechanisms involving multilevel authentication

 End to end data encryption, including the link layer

 Flexible and configurable access and authorization control

 Powerful cloud infrastructure

 Network agnostic with built-in feedback loops

 Configurable cloud-based rules engine

 API endpoints

 Data scalability

 NoSQL databases

Home Automation Gateways

For developing a home automation product, often stand-alone product sending data to a server
is not enough. Often due to battery and protocol limitations, the data from a sensor or sensors
present in a home has been routed through an IoT gateway.

To select the perfect gateway for your IoT home automation, consider some of the factors
including:

 Communication protocols supported

 Real-time capabilities

 MQTT, CoAP, HTTPS support

 Security and configuration

 Modularity

When it comes to building IoT gateways, modularity and hybrid IoT protocol support top that
list when a product is in the early stages of market introduction.

To incorporate a gateway in your home automation stack you can consider the following
options:
Either create a Gateway from the ground up using existing hardware stacks for prototyping
(using Raspberry Pi, Intel Edison, etc). Then when a PoC is validated, you can create your own
custom hardware.

Or, you can use existing gateway modules like Ingincs BLE gateway. These gateways are
extremely easy to customize and connect with your cloud services and devices. However, they
may or may not offer the same level of support that you need to build certain features.

For example, a gateway with a bad networking queue may result in traffic congestion, or it may
not support the required protocols that you wish to use.

Further, pivoting with these gateways to some other technology stack may become very
difficult. It should have been emphasized that they are extremely good for robust prototyping
needs.

Home automation programming language for smart home developers

The following programming languages dominated the home automation space: Python,
Embedded C, C, Shell, Go, Javascript (node.js). This has mainly happened due to the sheer
optimization of the languages for similar use cases.

Home Automation frameworks

If you think you can build everything from home automation (protocols, hardware, software,
etc) on your own, it is a bit unrealistic. Everyone starting from high growth startups to billion-
dollar consumer focused enterprises are now taking the help of home automation frameworks
to build connected products to delight consumers.

Everyone starting from high growth startups to billion-dollar consumer focused enterprises are
now taking the help of home automation frameworks to build connected products to delight
consumers.

There are more than 15 different smart home frameworks available for IoT developers to use
and build their next generation of connected home products. Some of these frameworks are
open source and some are closed-source. Let’s have a look at some of them in the sections that
follows.

Some of these frameworks are open source and some are closed-source. Let’s have a look at
some of them in the sections that follows.

Open source IoT platforms and frameworks for Home Automation

Looking forward to doing a quick and dirty prototype? There’s no need to write down
everything from scratch. Thanks to a bunch of awesome contributions by people like we have
open-source platforms that can get your home automation products up and running in no time.
Our favorites are:

 Home Assistant

 Calaos

 Domoticz

 OpenHAB: Supports Raspberry Pi, written in Java and has design tools to build your own
mobile apps by tweaking UI.

 OpenMotics[Asked their developer, waiting for them to respond(dev confirmed)]

 LinuxMCE

 PiDome

 MisterHouse

 Smarthomatic

Home Assistant for smart home development:

Supports RaspberryPi, uses Python with OS as Hassbian. It has simplified automation rules that
developers can use to build their home automation product saving them thousands of lines of
code.

Home Assistant supports the following:

How home assistant works involve the following:

 Home control responsible for collecting information and storing devices

 Home automation triggers commands based on user configurations

  Smart home triggers based on past user behavior

As developers, it is very important for us to understand the architecture of Home Assistant for
us to build high-performing products on top of it.

Let’s have a look at Home control’s architecture that makes control and information flow
possible.

Home control consists of five components:

 Components

 State machine

 Event bus

 Service registry

 Timer

The core architecture of Home Assistant

All of these components working together create a seamless asynchronous system for smart
home IoT. In the earlier version of Home Assistant core, the core often had to stop while
looking for new device information.

But, with the new versions of home assistant, a backward compatible API, and ansyn core have
been introduced making things a lot faster for IoT applications.

The best part about home assistant’s core architecture is how carefully it has been designed
and developed to support IoT at home.
IoT in Healthcare: Applications and Use Cases
The growth of IoT into nearly every business arena from medical devices and healthcare
applications to industrial IoT (IIoT) is amazing to behold. Our series highlighting the range of use
cases for the Internet of Things illustrates how IoT products and services are being deployed
around the globe, by industry. This article focuses on the range of IoT use cases in healthcare
today, supporting patients, doctors, medical staff and first responders in achieving better
outcomes.

Why is IoT in healthcare a fast-growth industry? There are a number of reasons, including the
capability of connected devices to monitor health vitals, route data, provide alerts, administer
medications and automate critical processes. The medical industry is adopting Internet of
Things technologies in everything from medical wearables to patient monitoring
and pharmaceutical temperature monitoring in order to improve accuracy, promote efficiency,
reduce costs, meet compliance requirements and enhance health and safety. In fact the term
"healthcare IoT" or HIoT has been coined to describe this market niche. Digi solutions support
development and deployment of a broad range of products and applications in this space.

Let's take a tour of some examples of IoT in medical and healthcare, including Digi customer
case studies that help to demonstrate the breadth of IoT applications in healthcare patient
support. You can find more examples of applications for a range of industries in the Customer
Stories section of the Digi site.

IoT in Healthcare - Promoting Hygienic Hospitals and Clinics

There are many healthcare applications related to hygiene, and this became more imperative
than ever as the COVID-19 pandemic took center stage around the world. As we shared in our
article about how the pandemic accelerated the need for IoT solutions, the Internet of Things
provides the right capabilities at the right time for no-contact applications and remote
connectivity, all of which support more hygienic health management.

Examples of low-touch and no-touch health and medical applications include:

 Contact tracing

 Pathogen detection

 Thermal detection (elevated temperature)

 No-touch sanitation dispensers

 Automated hand hygiene

 Hygiene monitoring

 Workspace and floor sanitation

  Air quality sensors

 Biometrics scanners

 Vital signs monitoring

 Remote patient communications

 Instrument sterilization

 Medication dispensing

Here are a few examples of how Digi customers have built healthcare applications supporting
sanitation and hygiene.

Floorbotics

FloorBotics, a robotic software and hardware development company, develops innovative

solutions in response to the market demand for cost-effective alternatives to labor-intensive
and non-sterile cleaning methodologies.

Their products include a line of set-and-forget robotic cleaners designed to combat hospital-
acquired infections (HAIs).

Clean Hands Safe Hands

Clean Hands Safe Hands sought to help healthcare and medical institutions promote health and
safety using wireless technology.
The Clean Hands Safe Hands product design uses wireless communication, via Bluetooth, in
sanitizing stations. The stations are sensor-activated and provide staff with sanitation
reminders. The sensors uniquely identify each employee and record hand hygiene events
throughout the health system. As staff members enter or exit rooms, they have a specific
amount of time to sanitize before the sensor records the event.

The sensors are connected using Digi XBee® Gateways which incorporate Zigbee mesh
technology. Because the sanitizing stations are connected by a mesh network, they maintain
collective data. This helps to avoid unnecessary reminders for professionals who just used
another hand sanitizer in a nearby location.

Get to Market Faster and Avoid Costly Mistakes: New FDA Guidance for RF Wireless Medical
Devices

BOS Technology

BOS Technology found they were in

the right place at the right time to
provide monitoring solutions for
critical environments like hospitals
and clinics, but also in areas where
individuals congregate, such as
schools/colleges, tourism
destinations and other sectors.
Facilities managers can monitor data
from BOS Technology sensors in
critical areas, including temperature,
humidity, tVOC (volatile organic
compounds), ACPH (air changes per
hour) and differential pressure.

For example, air supplies and air

exchanges through HVAC systems
can provide a range of data points
that act as health metrics for a
building's environment.

“In healthcare settings, construction teams must maintain negative pressure to trap unhealthy
particles,” said John Lepak, chief executive officer of BOS Technology. “As the coronavirus
pandemic started to spread rapidly, we realized that this technology would also work well in
clinical settings. “Frankly, our device – the Differential Pressure Transmitter – is ideal for
coronavirus patient rooms because it’s based on the same ideas and goals. In this case, you’re
trying to trap pathogens using negative air pressure to prevent the spread of the virus into the
hallway and beyond.”
IoT Wearables: Health Monitoring, Injury Reduction and Contact Tracing

With advances in Bluetooth technology, and the need for immediacy in feedback, wearables
are an enormous growth area for IoT in healthcare. In this section, meet some of the Digi
customers who are designing wearables for wellness, ergonomics, contact tracing and
patient/doctor connectivity.

Kinetic Wearables

Healthcare today is not just about treatment. And its

not just about care in hospitals and clinics. There is a
growing belief in the adage that "prevention is the best
medicine." Business leaders are increasingly promoting
healthy habits to improve worker health and safety.
These practices, in turn, can save companies enormous
amounts annually in lost productivity and worker
compensation due to injuries.

The Kinetic company developed a workplace wearable

called REFLEX™ to improve worker safety through
biofeedback. Designed for businesses whose
employees perform workplace tasks that involve
bending, twisting, and lifting, REFLEX is an ultra-compact device about the size of a small mobile
phone. As the worker bends, the device provides feedback in the form of a light vibration if the
employee performs any improper lifting or twisting that could lead to injury. At the end of the
shift, the employee and supervisor can review the progress on a dashboard that collects data
throughout the day.

Kinetic Updates for Contact Tracing

Additional worker safety concerns surfaced with the Covid-19 pandemic, especially in the close
environments of industrial workplaces. Reducing worker virus transmission and quickly and
accurately identifying potential risks have become key priorities in keeping industrial employees
safe and operations open. “When Covid infections among industrial workers began forcing
facility shutdowns, we saw a need to better leverage smart technology to connect essential
employees and help protect them from illness,” said Bansal.

LASARRUS Wearables for Physical Therapy

Patient monitoring is one of the most rapidly growing IoT use cases in healthcare. For the
founders of LASARRUS, a company that designed a patient monitoring device to support
patients in physical therapy, better insights and improved outcomes for stroke victims were
driving factors in development of their flagship WearME product.
LASARRUS (an acronym for Limb Activation Stimulation And Robotic Rehabilitation
Unencumbered Services), uses battery-powered sensors configured to capture biometrics such
as acoustic cardiography (through a built-in microphone), EKG, temperature, body position, and
more. These sensors connect to Digi XBee Zigbee modules configured in a mesh network.
"In the era of COVID-19, fewer patients or clinicians want to have in-person patient encounters," said
co-founder Nelson Emokpae. "We’re recognizing that the LASARRUS WearME can play an important role
in fighting the pandemic from a telehealth perspective. First, patients can wear our device from home
and enable the clinician to quickly obtain a complete physiological assessment. That will improve patient
outcomes without exposing them to unnecessary risk."

IoT in Patient Care and Pain Medication Management

IoT applications in healthcare today solve a range of critical needs. Monitoring and managing
medications, ensuring that patient’s dose correctly and on schedule are ongoing challenges in
clinics, hospitals and care facilities.

An additional challenge is the ability of busy care staff to quickly respond to every patient need.

Avancen developed an IoT solution for

healthcare that accurately and quickly
dispenses pain medication in a PRN
delivery method. PRN, which stands for the
Latin "pro re nata," means "as needed," or
as circumstances require. The product is
called Medication On Demand (MOD®), and
is the first patient-controlled analgesic
(PCA) device that empowers patients to
administer their own PRN oral pain
medication.

While Avancen's MOD device puts the control in the hands of the patient, it comes with
complete security and clinical control to prevent security breaches or overdoses. The patient
waves an RFID wrist band in front of the locked, pre-programmed device to dispense the
correct dose of pain medication as part of the prescribed treatment plan.

The technology behind the device is an embedded module in Digi's Embedded Systems line of
products. The Digi ConnectCore® line of System-on-Modules is an ideal choice for new designs
that require high performance processing, superior security, scalability and rapid time-to-
market.
Medical IoT: 3D Imaging Technology

IoT technology in healthcare is taking a mjor

leap forward faster application processors
that can render and deliver medical imaging
faster and at higher resolutions. One use
case many of us may not be aware of is the
need for accurate wound measurement.
This is a concern with fresh wounds, in
terms of assessing severity, as well as
wounds that are progressing through the
healing process.

Eykona, a UK-based medical imaging

company, developed a Wound Measurement System to meet this challenge. The system uses
cameras and 3D imaging to photograph, measure and map wound progression over time. By
observing changes in volume and tissue structure, clinicians can evaluate wounds and the
effectiveness of treatment.

The product was built on a Digi ConnectCore® system-on-module (SOM) solution based on NXP
application processors. By using a precise measurement system, healthcare providers can
ensure they are not only identifying the severity of wounds, but that they administer the right
care and treatment based on an accurate assessment.

Pharmaceutical Temperature Monitoring and Compliance

As the world learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, maintaining strict temperatures for
pharmaceutical drugs and vaccines is imperative. SmartSense by Digi® temperature monitoring
solutions for healthcare support this critical need. SmartSense is a division of Digi International
that provides complete IoT monitoring solutions for supply chain and logistics, retail food
service, grocery store and health and medical applications.

Healthcare monitoring devices

IoT devices offer a number of new opportunities for healthcare professionals to monitor
patients, as well as for patients to monitor themselves. By extension, the variety of wearable
IoT devices provide an array of benefits and challenges, for healthcare providers and their
patients alike.

1. Remote patient monitoring

Remote patient monitoring is the most common application of IoT devices for healthcare. IoT
devices can automatically collect health metrics like heart rate, blood pressure, temperature,
and more from patients who are not physically present in a healthcare facility, eliminating the
need for patients to travel to the providers, or for patients to collect it themselves.
When an IoT device collects patient data, it forwards the data to a software application where
healthcare professionals and/or patients can view it. Algorithms may be used to analyze the
data in order to recommend treatments or generate alerts. For example, an IoT sensor that
detects a patient’s unusually low heart rate may generate an alert so that healthcare
professionals can intervene.

A major challenge with remote patient monitoring devices is ensuring that the highly personal
data that these IoT devices collect is secure and private.

2. Glucose monitoring

For the more than 30 million Americans with diabetes, glucose monitoring has traditionally
been difficult. Not only is it inconvenient to have to check glucose levels and manually record
results, but doing so reports a patient’s glucose levels only at the exact time the test is
provided. If levels fluctuate widely, periodic testing may not be sufficient to detect a problem.

IoT devices can help address these challenges by providing continuous, automatic monitoring of
glucose levels in patients. Glucose monitoring devices eliminate the need to keep records
manually, and they can alert patients when glucose levels are problematic.

Challenges include designing an IoT device for glucose monitoring that:

a. Is small enough to monitor continuously without causing a disruption to patients
b. Does not consume so much electricity that it needs to be recharged frequently.

These are not insurmountable challenges, however, and devices that address them promise to
revolutionize the way patients handle glucose monitoring.

3. Heart-rate monitoring

Like glucose, monitoring heart rates can be challenging, even for patients who are present in
healthcare facilities. Periodic heart rate checks don’t guard against rapid fluctuations in heart
rates, and conventional devices for continuous cardiac monitoring used in hospitals require
patients to be attached to wired machines constantly, impairing their mobility.

Today, a variety of small IoT devices are available for heart rate monitoring, freeing patients to
move around as they like while ensuring that their hearts are monitored continuously.
Guaranteeing ultra-accurate results remains somewhat of a challenge, but most modern
devices can deliver accuracy rates of about 90 percent or better.

4. Hand hygiene monitoring

Traditionally, there hasn’t been a good way to ensure that providers and patients inside a
healthcare facility washed their hands properly in order to minimize the risk of spreading
contagion.
Today, many hospitals and other health care operations use IoT devices to remind people to
sanitize their hands when they enter hospital rooms. The devices can even give instructions on
how best to sanitize to mitigate a particular risk for a particular patient.

A major shortcoming is that these devices can only remind people to clean their hands; they
can’t do it for them. Still, research suggests that these devices can reduce infection rates by
more than 60 percent in hospitals.

5. Depression and mood monitoring

Information about depression symptoms and patients’ general mood is another type of data
that has traditionally been difficult to collect continuously. Healthcare providers might
periodically ask patients how they are feeling, but were unable to anticipate sudden mood
swings. And, often, patients don’t accurately report their feelings.

“Mood-aware” IoT devices can address these challenges. By collecting and analyzing data such
as heart rate and blood pressure, devices can infer information about a patient’s mental state.
Advanced IoT devices for mood monitoring can even track data such as the movement of a
patient’s eyes.

The key challenge here is that metrics like these can’t predict depression symptoms or other
causes for concern with complete accuracy. But neither can a traditional in-person mental
assessment.

6. Parkinson’s disease monitoring

In order to treat Parkinson’s patients most effectively, healthcare providers must be able to
assess how the severity of their symptoms fluctuate through the day.

IoT sensors promise to make this task much easier by continuously collecting data about
Parkinson’s symptoms. At the same time, the devices give patients the freedom to go about
their lives in their own homes, instead of having to spend extended periods in a hospital for
observation.

Other examples of IoT/IoMT

While wearable devices like those described above remain the most commonly used type of IoT
device in healthcare, there are devices that go beyond monitoring to actually providing
treatment, or even “living” in or on the patient. Examples include the following.

7. Connected inhalers

Conditions such as asthma or COPD often involve attacks that come on suddenly, with little
warning. IoT-connected inhalers can help patients by monitoring the frequency of attacks, as
well as collecting data from the environment to help healthcare providers understand what
triggered an attack.
In addition, connected inhalers can alert patients when they leave inhalers at home, placing
them at risk of suffering an attack without their inhaler present, or when they use the inhaler
improperly.

8. Ingestible sensors

Collecting data from inside the human body is typically a messy and highly disruptive affair. No
no enjoys having a camera or probe stuck into their digestive tract, for example.

With ingestible sensors, it’s possible to collect information from digestive and other systems in
a much less invasive way. They provide insights into stomach PH levels, for instance, or help
pinpoint the source of internal bleeding.

These devices must be small enough to be swallowed easily. They must also be able to dissolve
or pass through the human body cleanly on their own. Several companies are hard at work on
ingestible sensors that meet these criteria.

9. Connected contact lenses

Smart contact lenses provide another opportunity for collecting healthcare data in a passive,
non-intrusive way. They could also, incidentally, include microcameras that allow wearers
effectively to take pictures with their eyes, which is probably why companies like Google
have patented connected contact lenses.

Whether they’re used to improve health outcomes or for other purposes, smart lenses promise
to turn human eyes into a powerful tool for digital interactions.

10. Robotic surgery

By deploying small Internet-connected robots inside the human body, surgeons can perform
complex procedures that would be difficult to manage using human hands. At the same time,
robotic surgeries performed by small IoT devices can reduce the size of incisions required to
perform surgery, leading to a less invasive process, and faster healing for patients.

These devices must be small enough and reliable enough to perform surgeries with minimal
disruption. They must also be able to interpret complex conditions inside bodies in order to
make the right decisions about how to proceed during a surgery. But IoT robots are already
being used for surgery, showing that these challenges can be adequately addressed.