We are seeing noticeable growths in Internet of Things (IoT) in both personal and professional fronts. Some pretty useful examples of today’s IoT devices include Amazon Alexa, smart thermostats, net-connected power sockets, light and door openers and a lot more.
The functions of these devices differ from each other but they all share one common thing: wireless connectivity and communication – either via mobile, internet or both. With time, these devices will become more complex as generating an ever increasing amount of data and so will be complex to control and communicate with them via mobile devices. It of course presents some difficulties to mobile app developers.
But, what best technologies are available to easily enable wireless communication in IoT devices and in their apps for smartphones. And how technologies, mobility and apps can be merged together to make a user-friendly IoT device or system.
On other hand, because wireless technologies have not yet quite caught up to users’ hand, it’s unfortunate that things in this area are still too complicated, especially when it comes to their control and communication.
Let’s see what technologies we have in smartphones to control and communicate with IoT devices wirelessly.
Ignore three wireless technologies: Infrared (IR), cellular connectivity and Near Field Communication (NFC) because they aren’t suitable to wirelessly communicate with IoT devices.
- IR was popular in older phones for sending-receiving files but because of its short range and the need of positioning the sender and receiver devices in a line, it’s not practically useful technology for IoT devices.
- Cellular network cannot effectively be used to control and communicate with devices. If does, then the process will turn out to be lengthier, complicated and tedious.
- NFC cannot also be a good choice because the cover range is less than 20 cm which doesn’t fit to scopes of almost all IoT devices.
Remaining three are Bluetooth (classic), Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE). All smartphones now come with Bluetooth (classic) and Wi-Fi and many new ones are also coming with BLE. These are the most ideal technologies to connect, control and communicate IoT devices.
- Bluetooth (classic)
- Wi-Fi
Bluetooth classic and Wi-Fi are supported by most of the smartphones; however, they were developed with quite specific cases in mind. Bluetooth was designed to create a personal area network between two devices. Wi-Fi was introduced to eliminate wire on LAN networks.
Though, these two technologies aren’t fully suitable for IoT devices and apps. Wi-Fi, for example, relies on the TCP-IP protocol which requires each device to obtain its own IP and authenticate itself. This approach isn’t suitable for IoT devices as most of them do not have their physical UI to enter Wi-Fi pass-code. Also, doing so will make a device a bit complicated, too. Bluetooth classic, on the other hand, requires device to pair with each other, which is confusing and frustrating.
- BLE
Third one is Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) which is now becoming available in modern devices. It’s a perfect technology for devices which have to operate for a long period of time with consuming small amount of energy. Devices based on BLE range from heart rate monitor to fitness trackers to smart watches to a lot more.
This technology well suits for receiving small data updates. Also, the pairing process is greatly simplified as well as multiple of BLE enabled devices can be connected to central controller.
Large Data Files
But BLE cannot be applied for exchanging or transferring large-sized files. If you use Apple Watch then you will notice that you sometimes push updates of a size of more than 200 MB. To do that, these devices still depend on Bluetooth classic and Wi-fi.
Wrapping up
As we learned here that we have three key wireless communication technologies for IoT devices but BLE is lowest denominator, so start working on adding BLE capabilities early on…
Author Bio:
Sofia is a digital marketing expert in Mobilmindz, a prominent mobile app development company which provides iOS and android app development services across the global. She loves to write on latest mobile trends, mobile technologies, startups and enterprises.
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