ChApTEr 2 ■ hArdwArE for IoT SoluTIonS
Summary
The hardware available for IOT solutions includes any discrete electronic component used to create circuits
for sensors, power, and many other needs. Within that vast category of electronics are the components used
to support features for IOT solutions. More specifically, options are available for building a network of nodes
that observe, record, and display information about the world around us.
In this chapter, you examined a long list of microcontrollers focusing on the Arduino line of
microcontroller boards, low-cost (low-power) computing boards such as the Raspberry Pi, and the various
communication hardware you can use to connect the nodes from using an Ethernet or WiFi network
connecting to the Internet to low-cost, low-power wireless communication modules (XBee radios) for
connecting sensor nodes.
You also saw a brief tutorial on how to use the Arduino programming environment and even saw an
example of a simple sensor-based Arduino project (recall a switch is a simple sensor).
Finally, you took a brief look at sensors including an overview of the types and various sensors available
for you to use in your IOT solution.
In the next chapter, you’ll examine how the data in an IOT solution can be stored (be that on a local
device such as memory-attached file-based solutions), sent to other nodes in a network, or saved to a
database server.