IoT Boards

Introduction to IoT Boards

Internet of Things has a never-ending scope in real-world applications and has been widely considered by organizations and governments all over the world. The number of design boards available for IoT is also overwhelming with large industrial involvement. Many microcontroller panels, daughter boards, chipboard devices, and application-specific ICs are available with onboard Wi-Fi routers, infrared, other communication protocols and many General-Purpose Input/output pins for sensor interface. IoT boards are essentially hardware structures used to build models of the inventions of the designer. There’s a wide range of IoT boards available in the market today.

Classification of IoT Boards

In today’s market, one can find a large number of boards with different specifications. IoT boards can be broadly classified into three segments:

• Microcontroller Boards
• Single board Computer
• System on Chipboards

1. Microcontroller Boards

Some of the popular open-source hardware used for development and for providing software programming are mentioned below:

a. Arduino Uno Rev

It is an ATmega328P microchip-based open-source microcontroller board produced by Arduino, a tech company. The board has arrays of digital and analog input/output pins that can be interfaced with different boards for expansion and other circuits.

Arduino Uno Rev consists of 6 analog inputs, 15 Input/output connectors, 15MHz quartz crystal, reset option and ICSP header. Since the microcontroller is fully supported by this board, it can simply be connected to a device with a USB cable or power it to start with an AC-to-DC converter or battery.

Given below are advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

• Arduino Uno is very simple to learn and implement.
• Low-cost IoT board with high standards.
• A wide range of third-party libraries and sensors are available for Arduino Uno.
• A huge community of users along with easily available resources.

Disadvantages:

• Processing and task performance speed are lower when compared with other competitors.
• Arduino Uno has a big structure which requires large sized PCB, other competitors like ATmega works well for IoT development.

b. ESP8266

ESP8266 is a low-cost IoT board with an embedded WIFI system that allows for rapid prototyping of IoT applications. This comes with multiple variants and specific features such as memory capacity and number pins. Arduino IDE can be used to develop alternative IoT IDE or IoT applications.

Given below are advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

• ESP8266 IoT board is a cost-friendly. IoT solution in real-time implementation.
• This segment is very reliable and easily available in the market.

Disadvantages:

• Most of the document is available in only Mandarin language, which makes it inaccessible to the rest of the world.

2. Single Board Computer

Single board computers are mostly used to provide command and interfacing within several devices in industrial situations for process control. Some of the widely used computers are:

a. Beagle Board

The Beagle-Board together with Digi-Key is a low-power open-source single-board computer developed by Texas Instruments. It runs on Linux distribution and was designed as an instructional board by a small team of engineers to teach open-source hardware and software skills in colleges around the world. This board is very similar to Raspberry Pi.

Given below are advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

• The beagle board is very convenient and reliable in usage.
• The board is inexpensive when compared to its competitors.
• The board doesn’t require additional cooling equipment and has low power consumption.

Disadvantages:

• It has a basic structure suitable for beginners in electronic programming.
• Lacks audio and graphical capabilities.

b. Raspberry Pi3

Raspberry Pi 3 was developed in the United Kingdom to promote basic computer science teaching in schools, Raspberry Pi includes a series of small single-board computers which run on Raspbian operating system created for Raspberry Pi. Raspberry Pi3 is powered by a quad-core 64-bit ARM v8 processor and runs at 1.2 GHz. It further comprises a power unit, 4 USB ports, and an extendable board.

Given below are advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

1. Cost friendly and the board category is largely available in the market.
2. Consists of General-purpose Input-Output pins.

Disadvantages:

1. Raspberry Pi 3 isn’t as fast when it comes to CPU processing speed and has less memory than a Mac or a laptop.
2. Low fault tolerance, the board is prone to damage in case pins are inserted incorrectly.

3. System on Chipboards

System on Chipboards consists of various functional units such as:

a. Tessel 2

The Tessel 2 runs on JavaScript and is an open-source development board designed to generate the scripts using Node. It is a platform designed for the Internet of Things (IoT) to play, tinker, design and create integrated hardware. Tessel has a collection of Command Line Interface devices to set up the Tessel 2 panel and work with it. One must download these tools and use the terminal command line to execute the script.

Given below are advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

1. Javascript development environment makes Tessel 2 a worthy choice.
2. Low maintenance and optimum speed.

Disadvantages:

• The Tessel 2 is quite decent, but it is not as cost-effective as Raspberry Pi, nor does it provide much extra value over the latter.

b. Particle Photon

Particle Photon is a very tiny IoT board with an integrated WIFI module. This is an IoT ready board which has a range of expansion kits to make the process of design quicker.

Advantages:

The Particle Photon is a very useful tool for IoT prototyping which facilitates remote coding, quick application migration, and fast project turnaround. With the platform’s built-in factory models, you can be certain that bricking the Photon is impossible and charging the device from a standard phone charger is easy with the use of the micro USB cable.

c. Intel Edison Board

The Intel Edison is an incredibly small computer, it’s about the size of a memory card at 35 x 25 x 3.8 mm. But this little chip, despite its tiny size, boasts some great power. The Intel Edison has no problem running Linux 1.6 with a dual-core, multi-threaded Intel Atom CPU operating at 600mhz and 2 GB of RAM.

Given below are advantages and disadvantages:

Advantages:

1. Small yet powerful board for IoT integration.
2. Widely used across the industry with full support provided by Microsoft.

Disadvantages:

1. Limited potential when compared to present-day boards.
2. Expensive when compared to its competitors.

Conclusion – IoT Boards

In this article we have seen different IoT boards, most of the boards have huge support communities and groups to support any project. With the advancement in IoT, boards of multiple sizes and specifications are now available in the market. Based on the project requirement organization or individual needs to make the right selection of the boards to implement IoT projects.

This has been a guide to IoT Boards. Here we discuss the introduction and classification of boards in 3 segments with advantages and disadvantages. You may also have a look at the following articles to learn more –

1. IoT Communication Protocol
2. IoT Technology
3. What is IoT Technology?
4. IoT Hardware
5. What is Arduino? | Features