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Android as an IoT Hub and how it rips my heart apart

I know it sounds overly dramatic, but when you are passionate about technology, it becomes like a human relationship. When things don’t go the way you would like, it can…

Happy August

The summer is here, so Happy August! To celebrate my wife’s birthday this month and the fact that it’s Inventors Month too, I’d like to dedicate this month’s blog post…

How is IoT different from telemetry or M2M (machine-to-machine)?

See “what is IoT?” But in a sentence, it is different because it is the beneficiary of the proliferation of mobile devices, etc. and it has driven the price down…

Is a cloud service always required for an IoT application?

No. There are cases where there is a cloud connection, but the cloud connection is primarily there to collect data for analysis, and the function for the application that it…

Is IoT right for my company?

Maybe? We have to talk to you first, of course. But, because the technology that goes into building an IoT solution has become lower cost and more accessible today, more…

What are “things” in the Internet of Things?

It’s typically a piece of equipment or object that you are trying to remotely monitor. It could be an HVAC system or it could be a field full of corn…

What are the advantages of no-code development environments?

There is some confusion around what people mean when they use the term “no-code” (and also “low-code”). The idea, theoretically, behind no-code is that you do not need to be…

What is “cloudless IoT?”

It is an IoT solution that either does not connect to a cloud service of any kind or does not need a cloud service in order to function. So, typically…

What is “device management”?

Device management is the ability to add a device to whatever kind of network or connectivity that device is using to communicate. That process is usually called provisioning. You are…

What is “edge computing” and when is it needed?

Think about the “edge” as being the physical location of wherever the IoT solution is happening remotely. So, it’s not where the user is. It’s where the remote thing is….

What is 5G? What benefits does it provide?

5G is a collection of technologies that make up the next generation of cellular technology. The two big selling points of 5G are: 1) much higher bandwidth than is typically…

What is a “digital twin?”

Effectively, it’s a computer model of a physical thing. That model is not like taking a picture of the physical thing, it’s a set of business logic and rules that…

What is a “gateway”?

A device that has the only (or primary) job of routing data from one technology to another. So, for example, a LoRaWAN gateway is one that sends and receives messages…

What is a “message broker,” like MQTT or AMQP?

A message broker is a piece of software and the infrastructure that it runs on whose job it is to receive and distribute messages. These messages are data packets, data…

What is a “microservice environment”? What makes it better for IoT?

It is what Prism Core and Prism Edge are built on. It uses a software development model where instead of writing one giant program that performs a set of functions,…

What is a “time series database”? How is it different from a “regular” database?

A time series database is specifically about being able to store the same information over time and then being able to quickly aggregate that information. This is very common in…

What is a Camera as a Sensor?

It is when you use video input from a camera (which could be visible spectrum or it could be outside the visible spectrum, such as an infrared camera), and the…

What is AIoT?

This is a term that you will see spring up here and there, but it is the combination of AI (which is really Machine Learning) and IoT. It’s kind of…

What is an “application template”?

Templates are basically pre-built modules that are largely complete, but still allow for significant customizations. This is one of the ways we can speed up development of applications. If your…

What is an “ecosystem” as it relates to IoT?

The ecosystem is the whole collection of companies that are part of the stack that makes up an IoT solution. Very rarely will you be able to create an IoT…