Things study notes one: Getting Things seven essential concepts and skills
Internet of Things (IoT) is a global system of interconnected devices by the physical composition of these devices transmit data over the Internet, and IoT is changing the way we live and work. IoT device has been widely used in various industries, these industries including healthcare, manufacturing, automotive, retail, building automation and so on. Many companies are using data from connected devices increase operational efficiency, improve customer value and to provide experience. With the rapid growth in the use of IoT solutions, and the number has reached billions of connected devices, so the developers can skillfully needs of IoT solutions is also growing.
Developers want to seize the opportunity of IoT, should grasp the key skills involved in a series of subject areas, including:
- hardware
- The internet
- Application Design
- Application Development
- safety
- Business intelligence and data analysis
- Machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI)
1. Hardware
IoT core of billions of interconnected "things" or devices that are connected for sensing and control of physical devices sensors and actuators. Electrical engineering skills required for these devices to develop hardware, and physical design need industrial design and CAD skills.
In addition to the network connection is required to transmit the collected data, these devices usually need to have some basic processing and storage capabilities that are provided by an integrated circuit microcontroller or system on a chip (SoC). IoT devices are embedded devices, the circuit design must take into account each device operating limitations, such as:
- Environmental conditions
- The type and number of sensors and actuators connected to the apparatus
- The amount of data to be collected and transmitted
- Size of the device, and a power range
- unit cost
- other
IoT device may utilize a commercial microcontroller platform (such as the Arduino) or a single-board computer (such as Raspberry Pi) to prototype and develop custom printed circuit boards (PCBs) at a later stage. Prototype of these platforms to master microcontroller circuit design and programming skills, but also familiar with the hardware communication protocols, such as commonly used for serial communication between the microcontroller and the sensors and actuators connected to, I2C, or SPI protocol. Embedded programs are usually developed using C ++ or C, and in the IoT device prototype design, Python and JavaScript becoming more popular.
2. Network
Another important aspect is connected to the IoT. It is possible to enable mutual communication between devices, so that the device can also communicate with applications and services running in the cloud. Due to large-scale impact of the huge number of interconnected devices and network design decisions may have caused, network design and management skills are essential IoT. For example, the mesh network is a very easy and reliable extended network topology design, the IoT it typically will be used; however, the distributed nature of the mesh network makes the system more complicated, but also increases the network each device latency and power requirements.
In addition to network design, developers should master the practical knowledge of network standards, protocols and technologies. This knowledge includes client applications used wifi, Bluetooth Low Energy, Zigbee, cellular and RFID technology, such as low power consumption and LoRa wide area network (LPWAN) technology. And further comprising SigFox LPWAN NB-IoT (narrowband IoT), which provide a lower cost, lower power consumption, longer-range wireless connection is more suitable for large-scale industrial applications IoT.
3. Application Design and Development
Web and mobile applications that support user interface to interact with the IoT devices, and use the data from these devices. However, IoT devices may also have its own user interface (UI). Voice and gesture-based interface is very popular in IoT applications, especially for home automation, at the same time, augmented reality interface provides exciting possibilities for IoT data covering the entire physical world. Therefore, UI and UX design skills is the most popular area of IoT skills.
Web and mobile applications in high-level language development, which Java, Swift and Node.js development of IoT applications is the most important language. GPS programming skills are particularly important because the wisdom of including wearable devices and vehicles, including a number of IoT applications require location-aware. Developers should always pay attention can be used to quickly build a prototype of the new framework and development kit, as well as some of the IoT platforms, which provides the infrastructure and tools to help automate IoT applications to build, deploy, manage and operate.
4. Security
安全性是 IoT 中最重要的问题之一。必须在系统设计的每一步内置安全保护，而不是在事后进行添加。与安全性密切相关的关键问题包括数据伦理、隐私和责任。
IoT 安全性的最大挑战是需要保护：
- 对设备及其数据的物理和网络访问
- 与设备进行通信的应用程序和服务
- 网络本身
每天连接的新设备达数百万个，这使潜在的攻击点数量与日俱增。遭到侵害的 IoT 设备被用于发动分布式拒绝服务 (DDoS) 攻击。但是，一旦设备不受控制，如果没有建立安全和设备管理实践或安全基础架构，则很难部署固件更新来修复安全问题。
在如此紧迫的形势下，安全工程技能开始在 IoT 中备受关注。这些技能包括威胁评估（ threat assessment）、伦理黑客攻击（ethical hacking）、加密以保证数据完整性、保护网络架构和应用程序，以及事件监控、活动记录和威胁情报（threat intelligence）。
5.商业智能和数据分析
随着 IoT 设备传输数据的数量增加，大数据变成了真正巨大的数据。开发人员需要一流的数据管理技能，才能安全可靠地获取、存储和查询源自这些设备的海量异构数据（heterogeneous data ）。
许多 IoT 设备会生成延迟或时间敏感的数据，所以必须筛除或丢弃无关数据。IoT 开发人员应掌握的关键的数据分析技术和平台包括 Hadoop、Spark，以及 MongoDB 等 NoSQL 数据库。
6.机器学习和人工智能（AI）
为了提供价值并理解 IoT 设备生成的海量数据，IoT 开发人员最后还必须掌握机器学习和 AI 技能。智能大数据分析涉及到应用从数据挖掘、建模、统计、机器学习和 AI 中获得的认知计算技术。可将这些技术实时应用于传感器数据流上，以便执行预测分析或自主决策来响应传入的数据，也可以将它们应用于历史数据，以便识别数据中的模式或异常。
本文引用自：7 key concepts and skills for getting started with IoT