Aim::
Today's Internet of Things (IoT) applications are extended from smart homes to e-health, cybersecurity, data analytics, logistics and management of assets. There are many upcoming IOT solutions and platforms like ThingWorx, Xively, and Yaler. However, the existing eco-systems are not vibrant because of high entry-level barrier and low potential for any stakeholder. Especially, the academic community require a comprehensible way to create IoT services, develop their skillsets and build applications around them. In this regard, this work presents an affordable and scalable IoT eco-system with an easily programmable hardware platform, a private web server on cloud and a user friendly mobile application.
Background::
Home automation is automating the control of devices and appliances in the home environment to increase the comfort and convenience in their usage. To design a typical immune home automation system, we need to incorporate different sensors, wireless networking and a central node that can collect data and act as a gateway for Internet connection.
Objective::
Delivering an IoT solution involves the use of multiple technologies that cut across traditional engineering stream boundaries- sensors, microcontrollers, wireless networking, network protocols, web programming, and mobile app development. The challenge is to find a suitable hardware platform that can be easily programmed, open, so that sensors and actuators can be added as per requirement, develop or use existing web services that will help post, retrieve data from the cloud, and develop mobile apps to make data available to the user. In short, an entire eco-system needs to be put in place either through development or by properly configuring already existing components.
Methods::
Delivering an IoT solution involves the use of multiple technologies that cut across traditional engineering stream boundaries- sensors, microcontrollers, wireless networking, network protocols, web programming, and mobile app development. In this work, we employed a suitable hardware platform which is easily programmed, open, so that sensors and actuators can be added as per requirement, develop or use existing web services that will help post, retrieve data from the cloud, and develop mobile apps to make data available to the user.
Results::
A custom built GISMO based IoT cloud system is developed with sensors and nodes to form an infrastructure. The framework will assure standard design that establishes a functional link between hardware, software and web applications. A private webservice using HTTP server and MQTT broker is designed with access from anywhere with a public IP. The web services are coded in PHP and since it is an in-house development, addition of new services and maintenance of existing services is easy.
Conclusion::
Conclusion: