IoT and big data are both very technology-driven developments. The IoT and Smart City scenario will bring enormous market opportunities as well as make citizen lives smarter. The products around us are becoming more intelligent. Namely these developments change our behavior. We are in the midst of an era where we are discovering new opportunities through various hardware and software combinations. These smart solutions will lead to completely new experiences.

For a more human-centric view of the impact of the Internet of Things read Kyt Dotson’s “City of Paradigm: The Internet of Things,” a short story and discussion of IBM’s Smart City initiative.

As for developers, a vast ecosystem of projects is still rising out of the paradigm dubbed “Internet of Things,” although many of the paths have already been forged. Networking of sensors, devices, and nodes across geographic areas has been well underway for many years and if you’re looking for an example, read on.

Embracing the APIs for IoT growth

With consumers now embracing smart home solutions, the open API model will eliminate obstacles and reduce friction for advanced energy management. The Wi-Fi enabled thermostat industry is growing at a rapid pace. Ecobee, makers of the world’s first smart thermostat, integrates API model with energy companies and smart home solutions, such as AutoGrid, Earth Networks and SmartThings, to accelerate the Internet of Things and enhance consumer engagement.

Emerging standards like OpenID Connect and OAuth 2.0 is enabling cloud and mobile-ready features like device agnostic single-sign on (SSO) across environments. A system that uses REST APIs also makes it more developer friendly, and is a lightweight and flexible alternative to traditional SOAP-based Web services.

IBM has been part of using the IoT and big data analysis as tools to assist governments and urban centers better handle their infrastructure. The IBM Smarter Cities initiative involves using these technologies to provide better insight and automation. IBM Intelligent Operations Center provides an executive dashboard to help city leaders gain insight into various aspects of city management. IBM Intelligent Operations Center enables cities to manage large complex environments, communicate more effectively with citizens, understand the state of the city and collaborate between departments.

Ericsson Research in collaboration with the Swedish Institute of Computer Science and Uppsala University developed a system called the IoT Framework. The IoT Framework is a computational engine for quantitative information accumulated by sensors connected via any IP network such as the Internet. The framework is available as open source software in Github, released under the Apache 2.0 license.

The framework acts as an overarching combined Resource Directory and Mirror Server and collects information simple sensors with IP connectivity, Resource Directories and Mirror Servers. The information are then stored in a database and they are time-stamped, thus creating a historical footprint of what a sensor has measured in the form of a time-series. The information is recorded in a NoSQL database, powered by Elasticsearch that allows for keyword-based queries, thus making the information accessible to interested parties such as third party application developers.

The framework is being used by Cognitive Network Management Under Uncertainty project (COMMUNE) for storing real-time data from wireless sensors. Ericsson is also planning to use it in EU FP7 Citypulse for storing information in a “Smart City” context. In the context of water management, this framework can be used to regulate electronic valve when a threshold is exceeded in the stream that is monitoring the level of the flow in a water pipe.

The EPIC Project (EU Platform for Intelligent Cities) has contributed to the growing popularity and use of the Smart City concept with new technology applications such as RFID, IoT and big data. Open source technologies for the IoT using APIs for sensors, hardware, RDIF, M2M solutions and open source augmented reality is leading to number of new smart solutions. On such initiative is Waspmote, which is a modular open source wireless sensor platform for building networks of sensors with very low consumption.

Waspmote is a sensor device specifically oriented to developers. Currently there are over 50 available sensors and IDE (Libraries API + compiler). The platforms for smart sensors, produced by Libelium, are compounded by open source hardware and are characterized by their robustness, ease to incorporate dozens of different sensors and operate over long distances. The other examples are Arduino, DASH7, Rasberry Pi, BeagleBone, Ninja Blocks, Tiny Duino, Nanode, The Rascal, RadioBlock, openPicus, Fosstrak, Mango, Accada and others.