We are exploring the different IoT use cases and solutions. In order to facilitate the exploration, experimentation, design, development and testing of possible solution, I am investigating the possibility of locally setting up a simple IoT server.
Therefore I would like to understand the underlying architecture of servers that service IoT devices. Broadly speaking IoT devices connect service which services data and make the information available of use by other devices. This is pretty straightforward.
For now the possible IoT edge devices will use Wi-Fi, but plan to migrate to a low data rate, low power protocol such as ZigBee, BLE, or might be Z-Wave, at which point I will require a some type of hub. The data payload will be about 100 bytes, at peak the transmission could as high as one transaction per minute. The IoT edge devices will mostly upload data, with an occasional download to the devices.
It has been suggested that I look into MQTT, and RabbitMQ as possible options. Also I have been directed to “Displaying MQTT messages in a browser in real time” to which I am looking into at the time of writing.
Here are a few questions I believe are related:
- What makes an IoT server different from a webserver, mail server or FTP server?
- What is the underlying architecture of a basic IoT server?
- What characteristics are important when considering simple, lightweight IoT server?