Is it Finally Time for Easy IoT?

Hey you guys… IoT is hard, you guys. Can you, like, help or something? (Editor’s note: if you didn’t read that like this, you have already failed this article.)

Seriously, though, there’s a real trend happening in the industry toward making more user-friendly, plug-and-play development solutions for companies and consumers who want to get custom M2M applications without all the hard engineering work.

DreamFactory recently released its REST API Backend, designed to streamline the development process for the Intel IoT Gateway. DreamFactory is an open source runtime platform that makes it easier for IoT devices and analytics applications to get connected to many types of database and cloud services through Intel’s gateway services.

The idea is to eliminate the time-consuming process of building APIs to store, process and access IoT data, no matter how it’s connected or where it needs to go for analysis. DreamFactory is a member of the Intel IoT Solutions Alliance.

“Combined with our rich set of connectivity and runtime capabilities, it's easy to build connected solutions starting with Intel IOT Gateways at the edge, and intelligently directing the right data to DreamFactory's API services,” said Geetha Dabir, VP and GM, Application-Ready Platforms Division, Internet of Things Group, Intel. “Together it just makes for a solution that's readily tailored for unique applications and a faster time to market.”

In the realm of end-user friendliness, Chicago-based IoT application developer TempoIQ has released a new version of its “no-code” application development platform. Already using the platform are Wilson Athletic, Danfoss Drives, Bison Engineering and Silicon Engines.

With the View IQ application composer, IoT product makers, asset owners and operators can quickly build custom apps, real-time dashboards and data visualizations. One interesting new feature is that it has specific tools for simple sharing within organizations, so the data can inform all mission-critical functions. The Analyze IQ tool comes with custom analytics and the DataIQ data management tool is built to collect data and instantly enrich it with additional context from any product, device or department. Finally, Connect IQ eases the way for real-time data streaming from anywhere, at any time.

“With these tools we can optimize system performance, energy costs and customer productivity,” said Tom Kappel, Director of Strategy, Danfoss Drives. “TempoIQ brings the technology flexibility that customers count on from Danfoss.”

These are some new examples but there are dozens out there, so for those of you who are lazy, or just looking to get to work on helping your customers instead of getting bogged down in the minutiae of development, it’s a good time to be in the IoT.