IoT for dummies

Internet of things, what's the big deal?
We have a device, that can read sensors on one side, and connect to the Internet on the other, nothing revolutionary here. The challenge is to reach the device, from somewhere on the Internet, the device that reads the sensors does not necessary have a public IP address.
This is why the key component is the IoT server.
The device (the one with sensors) pushes data on the IoT server. The server can then be read from anywhere on the net.

On top of that, you can push data to the IoT device. For example, in a room:

• the device is connected to a temperature sensor, and pushes temperature data to the IoT server (and so, they can be read from a browser, smartphone...)
• the device is connected to a relay, data can be sent to the device (like from a browser, smartphone...), to drive the relay. If the relay is connected to a heater, you can manage the room temperature.

Typically, you can have a Raspberry PI, Arduino, or similar board, reading - at home - a temperature sensor to publish the air temperature onto the IoT server. You access those data from a browser (from your office, your smart-phone, whatever). Then you may decide to turn the heater on at home, the Raspberry PI (or its friends) has a relay that drives the heater.

Many server also use some push technology (like WebSocket or similar), so a client can be notified. A server like Adafruit IO provides this service for free, Particle also does it to some extend.

In addition, Adafruit IO provides a REST interface, very slick.
See an example of a REST client - in Java - on github. It shows how to read and write data on the server.

A real IoT application is also featured here in github, along with its Adafruit IO dashboard. It reads a BME280 (for the air temperature), and provides a toggle button (switch) that drives a relay on the Raspberry PI, to turn a heater on or off.