5 Things to Know Before Building and Deploying an IoT Device

The Internet of Things is a broad concept and has a potential to interrupt a wide variety of industries. As IoT devices have flooded the Industrial Market the challenges and issues that come up with it are also emerging. Developers are thinking about security as well as the operation of the device rather than only the design of such devices.

With prediction of 25.2 billion connected devices by 2025, IoT is here to live. By 2022, more than $82 billion will be spent on IoT-based sensors as well as on IoT devices designed for industrial, retail etc, as per the Memoori research firm. Plugging into the IoT needs a complete rendering of operations, so whatever the use case is for IoT, an organization must predict critical challenges. In this article, we take a look at few facts about IoT devices that any company looking to enter into an IoT project should know.

IoT Devices must go through Careful Regulatory Certifications

If you’re going to build and commercialize your own IoT device, it must be verified for RF operations in the specific Industrial market. Regulatory testing assures the successful co-existence of IoT devices to decrease interference in the shared radio spectrum. Unfortunately, there’s no specific universal certification available with globally acceptable testing standards; rather, each country or region has its own procedures and a responsible organization.

There are few well known certifications such as FCC certification in USA, IC in Canada and the CE in Europe etc. Many companies are trying to reduce how demanding and time – consuming the entire certification process can be. The complete testing process must be done in an accredited test lab and it may be essential for individual components as well as for the whole product. As the testing process is lengthy it may take weeks or even months to complete.

Let’s take an example; the FCC certification for RF devices usually involves two levels: the General Emission testing at a cost of up to $5,000 and the more complex Intentional Radiation testing which can expense up to $15,000. If the device works in various regions, you’ll have to make sure it will get all its applicable certifications. The better way to reduce the remarkable costs and a load of regulatory testing is to do plan for it from the startup phase of your product design and choose “pre-certified” device components. Specifically, pre-certified RF transceivers have already passed through CE and FCC testing and can save the most complex part of your device certification. Such components also minimize the risk of building a non-compliant product, as well as huge expenses and delays due to re-testing.

Edge Intelligence 

With the booming data volumes in the IoT era, edge computing has acquired an important grip. The standard model of processing and storing all data in the cloud or a data centers have seen to be costly and ineffective. So, instead of having a centralized, remote cloud to do the entire task, the data is handled and reserved locally, i.e. on the IoT device itself or at the nearby network node, that’s why edge computing, or edge intelligence, is becoming more important.

Consumer IoT products are often advanced, but in case of industrial as well as commercial factors, a number of connected devices are battery-powered sensors with very low computing power. Such a huge network having hundreds or even thousands of data points, which will require high processing ability on every single device.

Instead, the edge intelligence is sent to IoT gateway or industrial PC that collects data from several end points. These local data hubs process only related information, before sending it to a central infrastructure such as a cloud. Leaving heavy computing tasks to an edge gateway instead of on each device allows a more smooth architecture that minimizes cost and difficulty.

Data Connectivity

Even though data connectivity has vastly improved, it is still in an Implementation phase. It mainly contains how IoT devices communicate to the gateway and the cloud and what data format they produce. Most IoT gateways that are available are generally compatible with general packet radio services (GPRS) and Wi-Fi/LAN, but few legacy devices depend on programmable logic controllers (PLCs), telemetry systems and remote terminal units (RTUs) to produce data. So there’s a requirement of an appropriate edge layer that changes transport and data format protocols to send data to the IoT platform.

Interpreting the accurate combination of transport and data format protocols in front of deployment will move to a long way, in helping to make this process simple. Most stable IoT devices in the home, shop or workplace can leverage WiFi. They require a lot of energy but on the other side they are always in continuous process of collecting and sending data.

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is well suited for devices synced to a mobile. They need less power and utilize the phone’s capability to interact with the cloud. If neither of these is feasible then cellular kits can be implemented into the device itself to assure sensor data is sent where it needs to be at any time.

How will users communicate with the device?

Software is another edge of the coin. It includes where your data will resides i.e. locally or in the cloud and how it will present back to the user in a useful way. Where does the entire data processing take place – on the device, on a mobile, in the cloud or a combination of 3? An inappropriate occurrence of the inefficiency of the software to manage certain variations in run time, could lead to incorrect data could be recorded, resulting in improper data analytics that may not help to make better decisions.

You can utilize all the responsive and visualization tools such as a D3.js, Bootstrap and have your user log into a dashboard on any IoT device. Web sockets can unfold some appealing two- way communication options if you want to handle the device form a browser. App designs, its distribution and management should not be taken lightly.

IoT Devices Security over the threats

As per IDC, security and privacy concerns ranked as the number one hurdle to IoT device deployments among IT decision-makers worldwide. Deploying IoT devices means continuous updates and developments to keep up with industry best practices, as well as privacy and security concerns. We frequently consider IoT devices as smart objects that constantly interact and exchange data over the Internet. ? Just like every house requires a postal address, every device requires an IP address to be uniquely recognized.

In real, many IoT devices don’t require or even shouldn’t have an IP address. An IoT gateway with IP functionality accumulates data from a bundle of sensors using the local wireless link and transmits this data to the Internet on their behalf. Rather than an IP address, each of these IoT devices is allocated with a unique identifier compatible with its built-in wireless link.

Cost, as well as power efficiency, are not only benefit of avoiding the TCP/IP connection but in large-scale IoT networks, having each device directly connected to the Internet remarkably improves your vulnerability to a security threat like Denial of Service attacks. If your IoT devices are basically a small sensors that required transferring only a small amount of data on a regular basis, they’re most probably better off with a non-IP connection.

Before building, acquiring or deploying IoT devices make sure you’re well- educated about the requirements that comes along. On the upside, with all the resources accessible today there’s never been a favored time to enter into the IoT Technology and start building something. So take the next step today!