IoT Platforms Overview: Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Intel Galileo And Others

The IoT concepts imply a creation of network of various devices interacting with each other and with their environment. Interoperability and connectivity wouldn’t be possible without hardware platforms that help developers solve issues such as building autonomous interactive objects or completing common infrastructure related tasks.

• Arduino

he Arduino platform was created back in 2005 by the Arduino company and allows for open source prototyping and flexible software development and back-end deployment while providing significant ease of use to developers, even those with very little experience building IoT solutions.

Arduino is sensible to literally every environment by receiving source data from different external sensors and is capable to interact with other control elements over various devices, engines and drives. Arduino has a built-in micro controller that operates on the Arduino software.

• Raspberry Pi

Raspberry Pi is a mono-board computing platform that’s as tiny as a credit card. Initially it was developed for computer science education with later on progress to wider functions.

Since the inception of Raspberry, the company sold out more than 8 million items. Raspberry Pi 3 is the latest version and it is the first 64-bit computing board that also comes with built-in Wi-Fi and Bluetooth functions.

Raspberry Pi uses Linux as its default operating system (OS). It’s also fully Android compatible. Using the system on Windows OS is enabled through any virtualization system like XenDesktop. If you want to develop an application for Raspberry Pi on your computer, it is necessary to download a specific toolset comprised of ARM-compiler and some libraries complied down to ARM-target platform like glibc.

• Intel Galileo

Frequently referred to as a “reliable ally” of Arduino, Intel Galileo is a highly integrated board that’s just a little larger than a credit card. The microcomputer is equipped with Intel® Quark™ SoC X1000, operating at speeds of up to 400 MHz, a motherboard with up to 8 Mb of flash memory and 256 RAM. The device also has a VLAN port available with the 100Mb capacity, a microSD card and mini PCI express slots, RS 232, USB 2.0 ports with a possibility to connect up to 128 devices. This platform works with a very light distribution of Linux and a standard environment of Arduino. Intel Galileo has such features as its own USB controller and data exchange without SPI components. Another cool feature is that there is an expansion slot for PCI Express for Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and 3G installation. Intel Galileo supports the Arduino IDE.

• Tibbo Project Systems

The Taiwan company Tibbo Technology Inc. first announced its Tibbo Project System (ТРS) in 2014. This platform refers to a new product lineup aimed at designing applications for processes automation. The core parts of the platform are Tibbo Project PCB (TPP), input/output plugs (Tibbits) and Tibbo Project Box (TPB).

The Tibbo Project PCB (TPP) is a programmable and highly configurable automation platform with all necessary elements for quick start, a microchip for reset button, a programming chip, processor controlled strapping, programming MD button, LED and audio indicator. An additional slot for external input/output modules is available. Tibbo applications are coded in unique Tibbo IDE software (TIDE) that’s based on two programming languages – Tibbo Basic and Tibbo C. Both programming languages are strongly typed and object-oriented.

• Cloud-based IoT platforms

the most commonly used ones are Cloud Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud Platform as a Service (PaaS), Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) and others. A user can choose any of these models with respect to demands of his business.

The most popular cloud services available for IoT development include, but aren’t limited to: Amazon S3, Microsoft Azure, Google App Engine, Salesforce1 Platform, Heroku, etc.

• Microsoft IoT pack for Raspberry Pi2

Microsoft has just announced a new release of Starter Kit called Internet of Things Pack for Raspberry Pi 2.

It is designed specifically for IoT developers and uses hardware manufactured by Adafruit.