Build Your Own IoT Platform
Develop a Fully Flexible and Scalable Internet of Things Platform in 24 Hours
Discover how every solution in some way related to the IoT needs a platform and how to create that platform. This book is about being agile and reducing time to market without breaking the bank. It is about designing something that you can scale incrementally without having to do a lot of rework and potentially disrupting your current state of the work.
So the key questions are: what does it take, how long does it take, and how much does it take to build your own IoT platform? Build Your Own IoT Platform answers these questions and provides you with step-by-step guidance on how to build your own IoT platform. The author bursts the bubble of IoT platforms and highlights what the core of an IoT platform looks like. There are must-haves and there are nice-to-haves; this book will distinguish the two and focus on how to build the must-haves.
Building your own IoT platform is not only the biggest cost saver, but also can be a satisfying learning experience, giving you control over your project.
The book...
- Provides an economical way to build and maintain your IoT system
- Gives you complete control over your IoT platform
- Covers all aspects of the project
You will learn to...
- Architect an interconnected system
- Develop a flexible architecture
- Create a redundant communication platform
- Prioritize system requirements with a bottom-up approach
This book is for...
IoT developers and development teams in small- to medium-sized companies. Basic to intermediate programming skills are required.
Order
The book can be ordered here: https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484244975
Introduction
If you search for the keyword “IoT platform” on google, it will return about 190 million results within a second. This is the level of proliferation IoT has achieved (especially IoT Platforms) in recent years. Every solution that is in some way related to the IoT, needs a platform.
However, whether you develop this platform bespoke or is buy it off-the-shelf would mean a lot to your final product. Moreover, the term IoT platform has many connotations and vendors have overused it to a point where it just does not convey anything meaningful.
As businesses and working scenarios are evolving, I am seeing many smaller companies delving into IoT. However, not having own IoT platform is one of the impediments for such an evolution. The easy-lazy answer, as many would suggest is to use freemium or free trial platforms.
What lies ahead though is a greater challenge when things scale and costs skyrocket exponentially. When the trial expires or freemium is not enough, users find themselves locked-in and switching over is neither simpler nor easier.
Additionally, buying off the shelf solution often means you subordinate requirements or retrofit things to suit what is available. You might end up building a subpar solution if not outright bad. If having full flexibility and control means something to you, this book is for you.
I chose to write this book as I saw many of my customers struggling to understand the IoT platform landscape. State of the play has not been balanced with many vendors convoluting the offering to make it look like the only greatest thing built ever. For short-term gains, they have raised artificial constraints and showed superficial problems that only their offering can solve. I believe in empowering customers and this book is a humble attempt to it.
The book is not about building a full-blown enterprise-grade system. It is about being agile in a true sense and reducing time to the market without breaking the bank. It is about designing something that you can scale incrementally without having to do a lot of rework or disrupting current state of the work.
If you are a small to medium-sized company or part of the development team from a non-IT company, you will find this book quite useful. If you are an independent developer, researcher or learner, you will see the usefulness of the content for your endeavors too. Whether you are new to programming world or have basic to intermediate programming skills, you will find this hands-on book equally useful.
The book supports the idea of being frugal at the start and then invest only when and where necessary. It would help you to tap into technology advancements without bank-breaking budgets, and get off the ground quickly, contrary to the longer times required to adapt to the off the shelf or freemium platforms. More importantly, you will be in full control of what you are developing throughout the process.
Throughout 12 chapters of this book, I guide you through the step-by-step process of building your own IoT platform. There are must-haves and there are nice to haves; I distinguish the two and focus on how to build must-haves. You would not only save heaps but also will enjoy a control wielding and satisfying learning experience.
In the first chapter, I discuss necessary and sufficient qualities that any IoT platform must have & why. I also elaborate on the key question - why should you build your own?
Building your own means understanding at ecosystem level is important, we do that in chapter 2, where block diagram level details of IoT and platform are discussed.
Better planning is a key to success that reduces confusion and agony later on. So, I would cover platform wish-list, technical and general requirements for the building of our platform in chapter 3 and 4.
The rubber actually hits the road in chapter 5, where we initialize the cloud instance, install required software stack and apply security. If you are eager to jump into the "how" of building things, this is where you might want to start (and read about the "why" later).
One of the core elements of the platform is a two-way messaging system bus, which is explained in chapter 6 along with the installation of broker software and securing it.
Building of critical components of the platform, and message broker extension with additional functionality is covered in chapter 7. Followed by additional configurations and testing of the core built until that point in chapter 8.
In chapter 9, additional micro-services and data access APIs are covered along with the foundation for the rule engine. Then we build full rule-engine and authentication mechanism in chapter 10.
In chapter 11, we add some documentation and provide the testing facility for developers with interactive API documentation.
Finally, in chapter 12, I address a few commonly asked questions in various forums, discuss a few advancements that are in progress, which you might want to add to the platform when you build it. As I conclude, I leave you with a few possibilities to experiment.
Remember that all the code and configuration files discussed in the book are available in this repo. Feel free to star, fork or download them as you wish, and if you have more to add or suggest, I will be happy to hear from you.
I wish you all the best on this interesting journey and sincerely hope that you will enjoy the book, as much as I enjoyed creating it!
Order your copy today: https://www.apress.com/gp/book/9781484244975