One of the main challenges we encounter during the design phase of an IoT application is the connectivity. The sensors and devices would be distributed across a large area and would have communication protocols of its own. The data obtained from these sensors should be transferred to a web application hosted in a cloud platform.
What are IoT Gateways
These web platforms work in an altogether different protocol. Gateways act as a bridge between IoT devices and cloud platforms as it exchanges data to and fro in a seamless manner. Raspberry Pi, Beaglebone, Intel Edison etc. are mainly chosen as hardware for IoT gateway development. The selection of the gateway depends on the data and hardware interface required. Gateways are compatible with most of the protocols used for data exchange in micro-controllers and industrial controllers.
More and more companies are providing customized IoT gateway solutions according to the customer’s needs and demands. Most gateways are designed in such a way that a bidirectional transfer of data takes place between cloud and the end devices. Most cloud based services like Azure, AWS and Bluemix are compatible with handling requests from such gateways.
Few things that must be considered during IoT gateway development
Redundant data transfer: It is very important to maintain the redundancy of the gateway communication channels; this would guarantee minimal loss of data from the field and thus ensuring that the delivery never fails
Security: Data loss due to phishing is a major issue with the concerned personals. There may be unguarded points in the communication channels that are prone to the phishing attack. As custom IoT gateway development experts, we have the skill to strategize the design based on user driven use cases that secures the communication channel.
Lightweight: As they say less is more; similar case is applicable while designing an IoT gateway as well. Gateway prerequisites can increase and become more complex with the expansion of your client’s business, but it should always be portable and easy to deploy.
To accomplish this there are IoT dedicated protocols like MQTT, CoAP, LWM2M, HTTP, AMQP etc. which ensure a smooth transfer of data through these gateways. IoT gateway development is mainly done using open source JavaScript stacks like MEAN.