Billions of devices are connecting to the Internet of Things (IoT) every year, and it isn’t happening magically. On the contrary, a veritable army of IoT developers is painstakingly envisioning and prototyping these Internet of Things “things”—one thing at a time. And, in many cases, they are guiding these IoT solutions from the drawing board to commercial production through an incredibly complex gauntlet.
Building a working prototype can be a challenging engineering feat, but it’s the decision-making all along the way that can be especially daunting. Remember that famous poem by Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken, in which the traveler comes to a fork in the road and dithers about which way to go? Just one choice? Big deal. Consider the possible divergent paths in IoT development:
- Developer kits– “out-of-the-box” sets of hardware and software resources to build prototypes and solutions.
- Frameworks– platforms that identify key components of an IoT solution, how they work together, and where essential capabilities need to reside.
- Sensors– solution components that detect or measure a physical property and record, indicate, or otherwise respond to it.
- Hardware– everything from the circuit boards, sensors, and actuators in an IoT solution to the mobile devices and servers that communicate with it.
- IDEs – Integrated Development Environments are software suites that consolidate the basic tools IoT developers need to write and test software.
- Cloud – encompasses all the shared resources—applications, storage and compute—that are accessible via the web to augment the performance, security and intelligence of IoT devices.
- Security– this can be multilayered from the “thing” to the network to the cloud
- Analytics– comprises all the logic on board the device, on the network and in the cloud that is required to turn an IoT solution’s raw data streams into decisions and action.
Given all the technologies to choose from that are currently on the market, the possible combinations are infinite. How well those combinations mesh is critical for an efficient development process. And efficiency matters now more than ever—especially in industries and areas of IoT development where the speed of innovation is off the charts.
One area of IoT development where the pace of innovation is quickly taking off is at the intersection of the Internet of Things and Artificial Intelligence (AI). It’s where developers are intent upon driving towards a connected and autonomous world. Whether connecting the unconnected, enabling smart devices, or eventually creating networked autonomous things on a large scale, developers are being influenced by ever-increasing compute performance and monitoring needs. They are responding by designing AI capabilities into highly integrated IoT solutions that are spanning the extended network environment: paving the way to solve highly complex challenges in areas of computer vision, edge computing, and automated manufacturing processes. The results are already making their presence known in enhanced retail customer experiences, beefed up security in cities, and better forecasting of events and human behaviors of all kinds.
For IoT developers, AI represents intriguing possibilities and much more: more tools, more knowledge, and more decision-making. Also, it adds complexity and can slow time to market. But the silver lining is that you don’t have to figure out AI or any aspect of IoT development all by yourself.
Intel stands ready to help with technology, expertise, and support—everything from scalable developer kits to specialized, industry-focused, use-case-driven kits and more. In fact, Intel offers more than 6,000 IoT solutions, from components and software to systems and services—all optimized to work together to sustain developers as their solutions evolve from prototype to production
We take a practical, prescriptive approach to IoT development—helping you obtain the precise tools and training you need to realize your IoT ambitions. And we can assist you in fulfilling the specialized requirements of your IoT solution design today, while anticipating future requirements so you don’t have to.
Take your first step on the path to straightforward IoT development at https://software.intel.com/iot.