What do you mean by IoT? Top 10 Popular IoT Development Tools

Nikita Ochani
Nov 5 · 4 min read

The internet of Things, or “IoT” for short, is about extending the power of the internet beyond computers and smartphones to a whole range of other things, processes, and environments. Those “connected” things are used to gather information, send information back, or both.

Why does IoT matter?

IoT provides businesses and people better insight into and control over 99 percent of objects and environments that remain beyond the reach of the internet. And by doing so, IoT allows businesses and people to be more connected to the world around them and to do more meaningful, higher-level work.

In the Internet of Things, all the things that are being connected to the internet can be put into three categories:

  1. Things that collect information and then send it.
  2. Things that receive information and then act on it.
  3. Things that do both.

And all three of these have enormous benefits that feed on each other.

1. Collecting and Sending Information

This means sensors. Sensors could be temperature sensors, motion sensors, moisture sensors, air quality sensors, light sensors, you name it. These sensors, along with a connection, allow us to automatically collect information from the environment which, in turn, allows us to make more intelligent decisions.

On the farm, automatically getting information about the soil moisture can tell farmers exactly when their crops need to be watered. Instead of watering too much (which can be an expensive over-use of irrigation systems and environmentally wasteful) or watering too little (which can be an expensive loss of crops), the farmer can ensure that crops get exactly the right amount of water. More money for farmers and more food for the world!

Just as our sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste allow us, humans, to make sense of the world, sensors allow machines to make sense of the world.

2. Receiving and Acting on Information

We’re all very familiar with machines getting information and then acting. Your printer receives a document and it prints it. Your car receives a signal from your car keys and the doors open. The examples are endless.

Whether it’s a simple as sending the command “turn on” or as complex as sending a 3D model to a 3D printer, we know that we can tell machines what to do from far away. So what?

The real power of the Internet of Things arises when things can do both of the above. Things that collect information and send it, but also receive information and act on it.

3. Doing Both

Let’s quickly go back to the farming example. The sensors can collect information about the soil moisture to tell the farmer how much to water the crops, but you don’t actually need the farmer. Instead, the irrigation system can automatically turn on as needed, based on how much moisture is in the soil.

Top 10 Popular IoT Development Tools are as follows:

Tessel 2

Eclipse IoT

Arduino

PlatformIO

IBM Watson

Raspbian

OpenSCADA

Node-RED

Kinoma Create

Device Hive

To know in detail about each tool, I would request you all to dive deep in and have a read at Top 10 Popular IoT Development Tools.

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