This is an old revision of the document!
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).
Most prominent platforms
IoT market is an emerging one. It means that new solutions appear daily while other disappear. At the moment of writing this publication (2016-2019), there are some core hardware solutions that seem to be the main trend for at least couple of years, however. We've provided a short review of those platforms in the following sections:
- Arduino - with no doubt the most popular development platform for enthusiasts and professionals.
- Espriff (Espressif Systems) - the great solution of the single SoC including wireless network interfaces
- Raspberry Pi - to be continued Piotr Czekalski
