The Internet of Things (IoT) has not long made its way into our lives. In recent years, we have seen many examples of the use of the Internet of Things in our daily lives, including smart homes, smart cities, wearable technology, smart agricultural systems, etc. Even if we haven’t seen it up close, we must have heard about it.
What the Internet of Things does is connect smart devices together to make our lives easier. In fact, in Internet of Things technology, the goal is to implement the presence of the Internet in our daily lives apart from phones, mobiles and laptops on other devices.
But apart from the interesting applications of Internet of Things in our daily life, Internet of Things is also used in website development.
In this article, we want to discuss the role of Internet of Things in website development.
Table of Contents
What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?
A network of objects or physical devices that work with the purpose of moving or transmitting data to other devices or systems in the Internet environment is called the Internet of Things.
In simpler terms, connecting the physical world with the digital world is possible with the Internet of Things.
With the development of technology, the adjective “smart” has been added to many devices. Smart watch, smart home, smart refrigerator and smart car are all examples that have been created with the help of Internet of Things technology and their number is increasing day by day.
What do the statistics say about IoT?
Let’s take a look at the statistics about the Internet of Things.
It is predicted that by the end of 2025, the number of IoT devices will reach 75 billion devices. This shows that in the coming years, the role of the Internet of Things in our human lives will be stronger than ever before, and the power is in the hands of businesses that have aligned themselves with this technology.
Internet of things and website design
It may seem strange that the Internet of Things can be related to the design and development of the site. Before we get into this, we need to know a few things.
First of all, we need to understand that any network of connected devices relies on servers and cloud storage. In addition, advanced messaging protocols are used for communication between devices. And most importantly, we will need a strong user interface (UI) for user interaction with devices connected to this network. As a result, we can say:
Integrating web development with the help of IoT is a complex task and developers need to understand this technology well.
Connected devices in the Internet of Things, each has a dedicated address that is used to receive and send data on the Internet. In addition, each IoT device can include components such as sensors, processors, and communication chips that collect data from the surrounding environment and send it to cloud servers. Collected data is processed in cloud servers. Then the processed data returns to the IoT device or sensors to perform a specific action.
Internet of things in web design and development is directly related to front-end and back-end development of websites and web applications. Consider this example.
The Amazon Alexa device is one of the most famous examples of an IoT device that is mainly used in homes and is connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi and, as we said, has a dedicated IP address.
When you ask Alexa to play specific music for you, it connects to the backend of the web app, finds the music, and plays it.
Another obvious example of IoT devices is the smart watch. The smartwatch has sensors that display information such as your heart rate, the distance you’ve walked, and even how many calories you’ve burned. Smart watches connect to the Internet by connecting to a mobile phone, send real-time information from sensors to the backend, and display the result of processing this information in the backend to the user.
As a result, it can be said that IoT devices need a web application to connect the front end to the back end.
IoT web application features
Management of large volumes of data
As mentioned, IoT devices collect real-time data and send this data to the backend. The volume of this data is very high. Managing this amount of data and processing it at the same time is a big challenge. Especially in cases where this information is critical, the smallest problem in processing or sending this data may have irreparable consequences.
For example, in automatic vehicles where important and sometimes critical information is regularly exchanged between the device and the server, network errors or the loss of part of this data due to server and backend problems cannot be ignored.
In these cases, the web application must have the ability to return a packet of data if it is lost. Of course, this feature complicates the design of such a web application. That is why the world’s big companies are looking for hiring professional and experienced developers in this field.
C, C++, Node JS and Angular JS programming languages are among the languages required for the development of IoT web applications.
Dynamic user interface
As real-time information is collected in IoT devices, there is a need for a dynamic user interface that is compatible with this information. For example, a smart watch that displays heart rate must render it second by second and display it to the user. As a result, the UI of the page should be updated according to these real-time changes.
React JS and Angular JS languages allow developers to implement dynamic pages.
Security and privacy
One of the biggest concerns in IoT systems is security and privacy. About two-thirds of IoT research and studies are about security.
When all information is exchanged on the Internet, the security of this data is compromised by a cyber attack. As a result, data security in the web application is very important.
Developers need to send data encrypted to increase data security.
Powerful backend design
IoT devices perform best when they have a powerful backend. The backend must have the capacity to manage large amounts of data and process and send it to the frontend in real time.
In other words, we can say that different parts of the IoT system must be integrated. And this happens when a powerful backend works behind the scenes of IoT systems.
Improve energy management
IoT devices mainly work wirelessly. For this reason, the existence of a strong energy management system is very necessary. Also, since the heavy part of the story happens in the backend, a lot of energy is needed, and a high energy drain on the battery is expected. As a result, one of the important things that developers should pay attention to is providing designs to reduce excessive energy consumption.
Speed improvement
Since the Internet of Things uses cloud servers to transfer data between different devices, the speed increases.