IoT developer focus: Consumer, Industrial, or Both?

In a previous DevRelate blog post, “Internet of Things and your Developer Relations Program“, I gave an overview and list of Internet of Things (IoT) companies that have developer relations programs. This blog post takes a look at companies involved in IoT for Consumer and Industrial applications (and sometimes for both).

Evans Data provides an Internet of Things vertical research service that focuses on developers working on projects for connected devices in IoT. Projects can be targeted for use in transportation, entertainment, home automation, smart cities, retail, manufacturing, and a wide array of industry segments. One of the key take-aways from the IoT research shows that 55% of developers primarily connect devices through the cloud. The combination of IoT research and developer demographics and firmographics allows us to also know what industries the developers work in and where they work. Looking at the industries we can derive whether the developers are working on IoT projects for internal and/or external use. We can also derive whether developers are working on IoT projects for consumer, industrial or both.

IoT for Consumer and Industrial

 

Does your Developer Relations Program support IoT for the Consumer, Industrial or both segments?

In my home, I use a Nest thermostat and my PC/Smartphone to monitor and control the temperature. A large warehouse would most likely use an industrial grade digital temperature control system. For monitoring of the warehouse temperature and humidity they would probably use a PC and/or Smartphone for monitoring and alerts. Nest does have a support article that discusses how Nest thermostats can be used by offices and small businesses.

I also have several personal medical monitoring devices including a pulse oximeter, weight scale, blood pressure cuff, blood sugar monitor and temperature sensor. Depending on healthcare industry specifications and regulations these IoT devices work well in my home but may not be applicable for use in a modern healthcare office or hospital. Some of my devices come with APIs and lower level BluetoothLE interfaces. Some of the devices provide and app to upload the data to a cloud storage system and an API for me to build apps to get at the data. Several developer programs, including Apple and Google, also provide frameworks to get to health related data.

Since I don’t have a wind farm in my backyard, I probably wouldn’t have a need for industrial IoT solution like GE’s digital wind farm technology. I do have a smart meter on my home’s power meter. My energy provider, PG&E, provides ways to access customer-authorized data via a REST based API. As a developer I could build desktop and mobile apps for monitoring and alerts for both my home and a wind farm.

Most individual developer programs provide sample source code for specific device apps. It is harder to find a “hero app” that brings together multiple devices, multiple services, cloud and data storage into a solution. Does your developer relations program provide APIs to integrate devices, services and data for IoT and IIoT based systems? Are the services, APIs and architectures similar or different for IoT and IIoT applications? Are the features for developer programs the same? Depending on the criticality, government regulations and other factors, there may be higher levels of security access, authentication, encryption, etc. involved for your developer programs and the product offerings.

Internet of ThingsIndustrial Internet of Things

Recent IoT and IIoT News and Blog Posts

 

Consumer and Industrial IoT Developer Programs

Here is a list of Consumer IoT and Industrial IoT hardware and software providers and consulting firms.

Consumer IoT

Industrial IoT

If You have a Developer Focused IoT and/or IIoT program, Let Me Know

I would love to explore your IoT and IIoT focused developer program. Send me an email with your developer program URL so that I can join and take a look.

David Intersimone “David I”
Vice President of Developer Communities
Evans Data Corporation
davidi@evansdata.com
Blog: https://www.devrelate.com/blog/
Skype: davidi99
Twitter: @davidi99