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The Internet of Things (IoT) has grown rapidly in recent years and become a key focus for software developers. IoT offers numerous benefits for businesses, including cost savings, efficiency gains, and new revenue streams. To build an IoT application or device, you’ll likely need to leverage one of the many open source IoT frameworks available. An IoT framework is a set of libraries, APIs, and other tools that make development faster and easier. They also help unify best practices across different projects while offering built-in functions like security protocols, data storage solutions, communications standards, and more. This article lists the top open source IoT frameworks you should consider if you are developing an application or device that connects to the internet with sensors or monitors something in your home or office.
ThingsBoard
First up is ThingsBoard, an open source IoT dashboard and visualisation tool that helps businesses monitor and manage their IoT devices with ease. ThingsBoard is a scalable and flexible platform that enables hybrid architecture with real-time analytics, visualisation, IoT device management, and business intelligence capabilities. It was built with a distributed architecture in mind and has a range of features that make it well-suited to a variety of IoT use cases, including asset management, supply chain, smart city, and more. In terms of benefits, it’s designed to be easy to use and quick to implement, with a lightweight architecture that won’t slow down your system or take up lots of resource. It also enables secure communications and integrates with existing systems, which makes it easy to implement across an organisation.ThingsBoard provides device management, real-time monitoring, visualizations, dashboards, and analytics to help you stay on top of the devices connected to your network. It offers secure communications, device discovery, device configuration, and device parameterization capabilities to make your IoT solution easy to scale and maintain.
OpenRemote
If you’re looking for a platform for building IoT applications, then OpenRemote may be worth considering. It’s an open source platform for designing, deploying, and managing connected devices, applications, and people across enterprise environments. OpenRemote’s IoT capabilities are embedded in the core platform, alongside business process management, collaboration, and more. It supports a range of platforms, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud, and more. It’s a modular platform that offers flexible architecture, allowing you to add and remove components to meet your specific needs. You can also host it in-house, as it’s available as a SaaS solution. OpenRemote’s IoT capabilities include device management, data acquisition, and device orchestration. Its device management capabilities allow you to add, configure, and monitor IoT devices across different communication protocols. It allows you to add a wide range of devices, including sensors, actuators, virtual devices, and more. With its data acquisition capabilities, you can bring data from devices, sensors, and databases into your platform. Device orchestration allows you to automate functions across devices and set rules for when devices interact.
Eclipse Kura
Like OpenRemote, Kura is an open source IoT platform that also offers business process management. It’s compatible with a variety of devices and gateways, including Amazon Kinesis, Apache Kafka, Amazon SQS, MQTT, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and more. Kura has a modular architecture, allowing you to get started with a minimum feature set and then add more capabilities as needed. It comes with a built-in user interface that enables you to monitor, control, and configure devices. You can use Kura’s built-in security features to protect your devices and your data. It offers authentication and role-based access controls, encryption, and secure data communication. Kura is an easy-to-use IoT platform, offering an intuitive user interface and support for many protocols and languages. It’s lightweight and scalable, so it can easily handle high traffic loads.
Thinger.io
With Thinger.io, you can build IoT applications that interact with sensors, devices, and services. It comes with built-in support for popular protocols, including MQTT, HTTP, HTTPS, WebSockets, and more. You can use it to build applications for a variety of industries, including smart home, smart city, healthcare, manufacturing, and more. Thinger.io’s architecture is designed to be easy to scale, allowing you to add more nodes as needed. It can run on a wide range of devices, including Raspberry Pi, Linux, and Windows. Thinger.io also comes with a rich set of features, including device management, real-time monitoring, data acquisition, and device orchestration.Its device management features enable you to add and configure devices, control device parameters, and set event rules. With real-time monitoring, you can view data from various devices, visualize data graphs, and create alerts. Thinger.io’s data acquisition capabilities let you bring data from devices and sensors into your application. Its device orchestration features enable you to automate device functions and integrate with other systems.
IoT Toolkit
IoT Toolkit is a modular, lightweight framework for building IoT applications. It offers a large library of pre-built components, including adapters for third-party services, protocols, and languages. IoT Toolkit also comes with a cloud-based dashboard that lets you monitor and control your devices. You can use it to add a variety of devices, including sensors, actuators, and cameras. It supports many different communication protocols, including MQTT, HTTP, WebSockets, and more. IoT Toolkit’s modular architecture offers flexibility and scalability, so it can grow with your needs. It’s designed to be easy to use and quick to implement, and it offers built-in security features to keep your data safe.
OpenWSN
OpenWSN, an open source software framework for low-resource networks, is worth considering if you want to build an IoT application that requires little power. OpenWSN is lightweight, scalable, and resource-efficient, making it well-suited for low-power and low-resource devices. It offers easy wireless networking and comes with support for a wide range of communication protocols. These include CoAP, HTTP, and MQTT, as well as more advanced options like OLSR and XMPP. OpenWSN is modular and flexible, allowing you to choose which components to use. It comes with a centralized management system that allows you to monitor, control, and configure devices. OpenWSN is interoperable, open source, and built for low-power environments. It’s designed to be scalable and easy to maintain and integrate with other systems.
MainFlux
MainFlux is a modular IoT platform designed to be easy to use and scalable. Its architecture is flexible, allowing you to choose which components to use and how you want to implement them. MainFlux offers built-in device management features that let you add and configure devices. It also allows you to set rules for device behaviour and control device parameters. Its real-time monitoring features enable you to view data from devices and sensors and create alerts when something noteworthy happens. Its data acquisition capabilities allow you to bring data from devices and sensors into your platform. And with its device orchestration features, you can automate device functions and integrate with other systems.
OpenHAB
OpenHAB is an open source home automation and control system for managing your devices and smart home. It’s a flexible and modular platform that offers a range of functionality, including device management, rules and automation, monitoring, and more. OpenHAB is compatible with many devices and protocols, including Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, and others. It offers a rich user interface, including visualisation and data graph functionality. OpenHAB is designed to be easy to use and deploy, making it a great option for beginners. It’s also scalable and offers a wide range of features, including device management, rules and automation, monitoring, and more.
Conclusion
The Internet of Things has grown rapidly in recent years and become a key focus for software developers. With so many options available, it can be difficult to know which IoT framework will best suit your project.When choosing the best IoT framework for your project, there are a few key considerations. You’ll want to make sure the framework is open source and well-maintained, and that there is a community of developers using it. It’s also important to consider what type of application you are building and what features it will need; different frameworks offer different features, so you’ll want to choose one that best matches your needs.
