IoT Hardware Overview

IoT hardware infrastructure is mostly inheriting from the embedded systems of the SoC type. As IoT devices are by its nature network-enabled, many of the existing embedded platforms evolved towards network-enabled solutions, sometimes indirectly through delivering network processor (wired or wireless) as a peripheral device yet integrated on the development board (i.e. Arduino Uno with Ethernet Networking shield, GSM shield, etc.), sometimes a new system, integrating networking capabilities in one SoC (i.e. Espriff SoCs). More advanced devices that require OS to operate preliminarily benefited from externally connected peripheral network interfaces via common wired ports like USB (i.e. early versions of the Raspberry Pi, where WiFi card was delivered as USB stick), currently, usually integrate most of the network interfaces in a single board (i.e. RPi 3B, including Ethernet, WiFi and Bluetooth).

• “4.1. Most Noticeable Platforms”;

• “4.2. introduction_to_iot_communication_and_protocols”;

• “4.3. Arduino and Arduino 101 (Intel Curie)”;

• “4.4. esp”;

• “4.5. RaspberryPI (RPi)”.

IoT market is an emerging one. New hardware solutions appear almost daily, while others disappear quick. At the moment of writing this publication (2016–2019), there are some core hardware solutions that seem to be prominent for at least a couple of years, however. We've provided a short review of those platforms in the following sections:

• AVR: Arduino – a development board that uses Atmel SoC, that is no doubt the most popular development platform for enthusiasts and professionals. Arduino itself barely offers networking capabilities yet; there is a vast number of extension boards including network interfaces (both wired and wireless);
• ESP: Espriff (Espressif Systems) – the great SoC solution of the single SoC including wireless network interfaces;
• ARM: Raspberry Pi (and its clones) – advanced boards, including Linux operating system with GUI interface, even able to replace desktop computers.