A Comprehensive Guide to Start Building an IoT Product

What is Internet-of-Things (IoT)?

Let’s take a simple example. Your phone. Before it was connected to the Internet it was dumb, like really dumb. It could only play the songs you have put in it. It could only call the people you have the contact number for.

Then something magical happened. We connected it to the internet

Now it can play any song. You are not limited to just a contact number for connecting to someone. You have access to information in your hand that won’t fit in TBs of data storage. That’s the power of connecting to the Internet.

Internet and smartphones, computers are really powerful tools, but the smartphone won’t water your plants, it won’t open your door. These devices have very limited physical abilities.

The Internet of Things is about extending the power of the internet beyond computers and smartphones to a whole range of other things, processes, and environments.

How do we do that? How do we extend the power to the internet?

By putting components in the world around you which interact and sense the physical world and connecting those to the internet. These components are combinations of sensors and actuators.

What is the sensor?

Simply put, the sensor measures a physical property. Like temperature sensor measures temperature.

What is an actuator?

You can understand actuators as the opposite of the sensor. Like sensors converts external changes to signal, actuators convert signature to action. Like opening a door lock.

Of course with these sensors and actuators you would need some additional hardware that controls these and if needed and transfers information.

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IoT Changing the world

IoT enables you to monitor and act on connected devices more closely than ever. Be it industries managing their machines, farmers checking on their crops, governments managing the borders, administrations monitoring air or water quality, nothing needs to be checked once or twice a week manually.

Everything happens in real-time!

Think of smart refrigerators that remind you when you run out of stock of milk, or smart plants which remind you to water them when they run dry, the possibilities are only limited to your imagination.

We are already seeing such great changes with IoT

• Self Driving Cars
• Smart Home and Industrial Security
• Home Automation
• Fitness trackers, smartwatches and wearables
• Autonomous and efficient Farming

It’s very important that you understand and imagine how a world with IoT would look like. Here are two really good Ted talks which will help you visualize a world of future with IoT

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Everything around us has become smart, like smart infrastructures, smart cities, autonomous vehicles, to name a few. The innovation of smart devices makes it possible to achieve these heights in science and technology. But, data is vulnerable, there is a risk of attack by cybercriminals. To get started, let’s know about IoT devices.

What are IoT devices?

The Internet Of Things(IoT) is a system that interrelates computer devices like sensors, software, and actuators, digital machines, etc. They are linked together with particular objects that work through the internet and transfer data over devices without humans interference.

Famous examples are Amazon Alexa, Apple SIRI, Interconnected baby monitors, video doorbells, and smart thermostats.

How could your IoT devices be vulnerable?

When technologies grow and evolve, risks are also on the high stakes. Ransomware attacks are on the continuous increase; securing data has become the top priority.

When you think your smart home won’t fudge a thing against cybercriminals, you should also know that they are vulnerable. When cybercriminals access our smart voice speakers like Amazon Alexa or Apple Siri, it becomes easy for them to steal your data.

Cybersecurity report 2020 says popular hacking forums expose 770 million email addresses and 21 million unique passwords, 620 million accounts have been compromised from 16 hacked websites.

The attacks are likely to increase every year. To help you secure your data of IoT devices, here are some best tips you can implement.

Tips to secure your IoT devices

1. Change Default Router Name

Your router has the default name of make and model. When we stick with the manufacturer name, attackers can quickly identify our make and model. So give the router name different from your addresses, without giving away personal information.

2. Know your connected network and connected devices

If your devices are connected to the internet, these connections are vulnerable to cyber attacks when your devices don’t have the proper security. Almost every web interface is equipped with multiple devices, so it’s hard to track the device. But, it’s crucial to stay aware of them.

3. Change default usernames and passwords

When we use the default usernames and passwords, it is attackable. Because the cybercriminals possibly know the default passwords come with IoT devices. So use strong passwords to access our IoT devices.

4. Manage strong, Unique passwords for your IoT devices and accounts

Use strong or unique passwords that are easily assumed, such as ‘123456’ or ‘password1234’ to protect your accounts. Give strong and complex passwords formed by combinations of alphabets, numeric, and not easily bypassed symbols.

Also, change passwords for multiple accounts and change them regularly to avoid attacks. We can also set several attempts to wrong passwords to set locking the account to safeguard from the hackers.

5. Do not use Public WI-FI Networks

Are you try to keep an eye on your IoT devices through your mobile devices in different locations. I recommend you not to use the public WI-FI network to access them. Because they are easily accessible through for everyone, you are still in a hurry to access, use VPN that gives them protection against cyber-attacks, giving them privacy and security features, for example, using Express VPN.

6. Establish firewalls to discover the vulnerabilities

There are software and firewalls like intrusion detection system/intrusion prevention system in the market. This will be useful to screen and analyze the wire traffic of a network. You can identify the security weakness by the firewall scanners within the network structure. Use these firewalls to get rid of unwanted security issues and vulnerabilities.

7. Reconfigure your device settings

Every smart device comes with the insecure default settings, and sometimes we are not able to change these default settings configurations. These conditions need to be assessed and need to reconfigure the default settings.

8. Authenticate the IoT applications

Nowadays, every smart app offers authentication to secure the accounts. There are many types of authentication methods like single-factor authentication, two-step authentication, and multi-factor authentication. Use any one of these to send a one time password (OTP) to verify the user who logs in the smart device to keep our accounts from falling into the wrong hands.

9. Update the device software up to date

Every smart device manufacturer releases updates to fix bugs in their software. These security patches help us to improve our protection of the device. Also, update the software on the smartphone, which we are used to monitoring the IoT devices to avoid vulnerabilities.

10. Track the smartphones and keep them safe

When we connect the smart home to the smartphone and control them via smartphone, you need to keep them safe. If you miss the phone almost, every personal information is at risk to the cybercriminals. But sometimes it happens by accident, makes sure that you can clear all the data remotely.

However, securing smart devices is essential in the world of data. There are still cybercriminals bypassing the securities. So make sure to do the safety measures to avoid our accounts falling out into the wrong hands. I hope these steps will help you all to secure your IoT devices.

If you have any, feel free to share them in the comments! I’d love to know them.

Are you looking for more? Subscribe to weekly newsletters that can help your stay updated IoT application developments.

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The Best of IoT: Tutorials and Articles

We’ve compiled the best of the best from the IoT Zone, where you’ll find articles and tutorials using Arduino, Raspberry Pi, MQTT, and microcontrollers. You’ll also see lists of different IoT platforms and augmented reality SDKs as well as Arduino alternatives if that’s not your thing. We also pulled together articles on IoT and agriculture, healthcare, transportation, and much more. Enjoy!

Tutorials and Projects

• How to Set Up an OpenVPN Server on a Raspberry Pi by David Cabanero — Want to learn more about how to set up an OpenVPN server on a Raspberry Pi? Check out this post to learn how with the Remote Access VPN.
• MQTT Publishing and Subscribing Messages to MQTT Broker (CloudMQTT) Using .NET C## MQTT Client Library by Kapil Khandelwal — In this article, learn how to use MQTTnet.NET C## MQTT Client Library to publish and subscribe messages to MQTT Broker.
• Raspberry Pi IoT: Sensors, InfluxDB, MQTT, and Grafana by Francesco Azzola — Learn how to build a dashboard based on Grafana that visualizes data acquired by sensors.
• How to Choose a Microcontroller for IoT by Jessica Califano — Most IoT devices use some kind of microcontroller. Learn more about selecting one for your IoT device.
• MQTT Client Load Balancing With RabbitMQ and Spring Cloud by Radwan Nizam — Expand your knowledge of MQTT Client and load balancing.
• How to Set Up Amateur Radio Digital Voice Hotspot With Pi-Star and mmdvm by Kevin Hooke — Want to learn how to set up an amateur radio digital voice hotspot? Check out this post to learn how using mmdvm and Pi-Star setup —DSTAR, DMR, and other modes.

Building the World’s Largest Raspberry Pi Cluster by Gerald Venzl — Oracle’s Raspberry Pi Supercomputer, the largest Raspberry Pi cluster known to exist, got

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Internet of Things (IoT): The Roadmap to a Smart Future - Mobinius

https://www.mobinius.com/blogs/internet-of-things-iot-the-roadmap-to-a-smart-future

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IOT Product Management: 4 Critical Success Factors

It’s been over 6 months since I joined KritiLabs. The learning that I have had been very steep and intense, considering its a career shift for me from a services based pre-sales to a product based pre-sales and product management.

KritiLabs’ core proposition has been to help solve some of the real world Remote Asset Management problems using IoT. As part of my initial 30 days to further understand their DNA, I was involved in understanding the products, the people & teams behind it, the customers we work with.

Below is my perspective, based on what I had learned till date, on what is essential to make a hardware product succeed for mass adoption in industries which are still following decades old systems and processes:

User Empowerment

With IoT, it is very easy to reduce the user involvement within a process to a zero. Our products have been designed specifically for the non- tech savvy folks who take care of running the backbone of our country’s logistics - truck drivers, commercial vehicle drivers etc. We felt taking some of the decisions out of their hands would make these users feel demotivated, as they are no longer empowered to take decisions as part of the process, resulting in lower adoption of these devices in such an industry or a business process.

In such situations it is always prudent to empower the users to take decisions or operate these devices based on the information the device provides to these users, while logging their activities as part of audit trail.

User feedback

Regular user feedback is essential to help improve the product not only from improving the product’s experience but also for product iterations which can solve additional use cases within the same business process. To create a new product / device, we follow a very specific methodology to bring the product / device to fruition (more on this process in the next blog). As part of this process, when we create a prototype, we either deploy it on the field along with an existing product to to get user feedback or we work with one of our customers to help get that feedback.

We have seen that getting user feedback has helped make the product very robust and functionally closer to an ideal solution.

Better design & integration testing of hardware

Unlike software products, where certain features of the product can be rolled back, issues related directly to the firmware and hardware are not that easy to be solved through a simple update. It’s actually a better strategy to invest more in the design and test phase for better integration of the hardware & software as well as ensuring no issues related to hardware creep in production

Pilots

One of the corner stones for success for a product when newly introduced is beta phase or a pilot phase. Especially with regards to hardware, the chances of it failing outside of a controlled environment is way higher. In our pilots at KritiLabs we have seen multiple points of failure right from the vagaries of nature to human ingenuity to ensure the product fails in meeting its objectives.

Success of the pilot doesn’t hinge on the success / failure of the product during pilot, but amount of feedback and data it can collect during the pilot. This data and feedback must be fed back to product / solution development

These are some of the key things, when done right can help improve mass adoption of IOT devices in areas which still follow processes and systems which are decades old.

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