IoT is changing the way the Enterprises communicate globally with advanced technology making the business process much simpler. Investing in the Internet of things development model is worth every hype it creates in the technology world.

One study from McKinsey & Co reveals that by the end of 2025, $11.1 trillion dollar revenue will be generated by connecting the physical world digitally through IoT technologies. However, to build a IoT application from idea and prototype model to deployment and execution, certain key factors and techniques need to be followed. This article will walk through to help you get started quickly and give you a basic understanding of the IoT app development model.

5 Basic Requirements Before Developing an IoT Application

Here are some of the key factors to consider before rolling up your sleeve before developing an IoT application.

1. Secured Data Collection

Encrypted data collection is needed for sensitive data for developing a customized IoT application.

2. Excellent Data streaming Network

Dealing with large volumes of data at a time may often lead to low latency rates. To avoid poor performance, excellent data steaming methodology should be practised with independent mechanisms.

3. Interoperability

Machine to machine communication with no buffering and high frequency range is crucial for building any kind of IoT application.

4. Complete Data management System in place

Effective Data processing system with an in-memory analysis is must for managing millions of devices data and streamlining them across multiple devices ensures a rapid end delivery

5. Setting up the internet of things platform

Having a set of software tools with centralized cloud storage platforms like Amazon web services, Azure etc to store, process and analyze the data transmitted through these devices. It helps the enterprises to reduce the operational costs with efficient IoT platforms.

Step by step guide to build an IoT application:

This is the core of the article where we will be looking in detail at how to build a IoT app from scratch to final deployment and some of the most popular tools used to build these applications.

Step 1: Start with a Business Idea/ Prototype Model

Before getting down to the field for building the actual product, first visualize what type of result you need to get and then start structuring your business solution accordingly. For this, kickstart your IoT application development process with a mockup model.

To get started, define the basic parameters to achieve quicker and better IoT app development process. Some of them are listed below,

• Decide the industry for which you need to build this app
• Total number of functional modules
• Dashboards
• Alerts and Notifications
• Secured Access

Step 2: Choose the Device

Devices are the essential part for developing an IoT app which is used to collect the data. Here device attributes to the hardware selection, connection protocol as per the business requirement and the industry.

Choosing the connection protocol like Bluetooth, LoRa, Ethernet, Sigfox etc and hardware devices with low power consumption and embedded OS are some of the factors to consider. However, many IoT application development companies have integrated physical and virtual tools to simplify the tasks for developers.

Step 3: Defining a detailed app structure

To develop any application with cross platform compatibilities, there are three key parameters to consider,

1. Variables
2. Alerts and,
3. Dashboards

Variables - These are specific data related to a particular metric derived from a hardware piece. Examples of variables include temperature, locations for fleet management or heartbeats, step count, calorie intake for health wearables and so on.

Variables can be grouped together to form a derived variable or can be used for analysing a trend by monitoring these individual variables over a course of time.

Alerts - After setting up your variables related to your project and building a dashboard based on those metrics, alert systems need to be set. When a particular sensor exceeds the required threshold then it sends a notification to the centralized hub.

• Alerts helps to monitor and maintain the demand-supply chain in synchronization without any lag in the inventory levels.
• It helps to track the fleet health
• Maintenance of the devices and reduces the downtime for any upcoming issues can be prevented if a prior alert system for each metric is in place.

Dashboards - An interactive single interface which provides all the essential information in form of visuals and stats related to each variable as discussed in the above point is the dashboard.

Various dashboard capabilities include,

• Charts
• Maps
• Controls
• List report
• High level to granular slic data insights and much more

Step 4: Decide on the Technological Stack

The software technology remains the backbone of a strong IoT app development model. It can be customized according to the business verticals. To know how to build an IoT strategy, most of the developers will analyze the several tools and platforms in the market and take an informed business decision that aligns with their organization goals.

Choose from various Cloud Services platform

Amazon Web Services - Get file hosting, reliable cloud solutions to effective data exchange between devices

Oracle IoT platform - Building an IoT app in Oracle environment provides faster data exchange, API support with virtualization techniques

Azure IoT suite - Microsoft based suite Azure, offers various functionalities with an agile cloud architecture where it effectively scales large volumes of data.

Front-End Development Services

To get interactive user experience, an effective user-friendly interface is mandatory. It should be easy to navigate for the end-user at the same time they should take care of the credentials of each user.

Track the user’s behaviour patterns to provide a great impact among users and popularize the app to reach global audiences. Among the popular front-end tools, Javascript and its frameworks are widely used.

Back-end Development Services

This is a crucial step while developing an IoT app, server-side deployments may be challenging tasks but outsourcing to a IoT app development services company may reduce the deployment time and increase the ready-to-market time.

Finally, along with these technology stack, there are numerous tools which we will be covering shortly in the upcoming sessions.

Step 5: Customizing as per end-user application

Before launching to the public, Beta testing is performed to check the performance of the apps and based on the initial user feedback, the app can be enhanced accordingly. Also, opting an IoT software development company which provides a complete white-lable solution is an optimal choice for getting an end-end customized application.

Tools and technologies to build an IoT app

Here’s a quick overview of some of the popularly used suite of tools to build the IoT apps.

• Azure IoT Suite
• Amazon Web Services
• IBM Watson
• Oracle IoT

How to build an IoT app from scratch?

Choosing the right company like Contus which has an Enterprise-grade technology stack for building world-class IoT solutions would be a wise choice. Looking into the powerful technological stack as stated below, reveals their high-end IoT development model in a nutshell.

Data Analytical tool - Tableau. Power BI - For data processing, data analysis.
Hardware - Raspberry PI, Ardunio, Beacons
Communication Protocol - Z-Wave, ZigBee, Sigfox,LoRaWAN, iBeacon, Bluetooth
Platforms - Amazon Web Services IoT , Microsoft Azure IoT, Google Cloud Platform, ThingWorx IoT Platform, Universal of Things(IoT) , DeviceHive, IBM Bluemix, OpenHAB
Javascripts frameworks - Node.js, Angular, Spring Boot, .NET Core, C/C++/C#,React and much more!

Conclusion

Hence, building an IoT application whether from scratch or upgrading to newer technologies, there are several businesses which offer these IoT app development services for global customers right from smart homes, Smart Retails to Healthcare systems and Smart Agriculture, Internet of things has expanded its wings and capabilities through the advancement in various tools and technologies.