The Internet of Things (IoT) promises a wide range of benefits for industry, energy and utility companies, municipalities, healthcare, and consumers. Data can be collected in extraordinary volume and detail regarding almost anything worth measuring, such as public health and safety, the environment, industrial and agricultural production, energy, and utilities. New data analysis tools have been optimized for the massive amounts of data that IoT produces, enabling well-informed decisions to be made quickly.

But putting IoT systems into place can be a complicated proposition, and fraught with hazards. Solutions may involve devices and technologies from many different vendors, requiring a good understanding of software and hardware and strategies to integrate them, as well as the risks associated with security, privacy, and the safety of those whose working and living environments are managed by these systems.

IT professionals often have little or no experience working with embedded systems, sensor networks, actuators, real-time systems, and other components that are common to IoT, so this course provides a foundation for understanding how these components work with other systems that IT professionals typically have more experience working with—such as networks, cloud computing, and applications running on servers, desktop computers, and mobile devices.

In this course, students will learn general strategies for planning, designing, developing, implementing, and maintaining an IoT system through various case studies and by assembling and configuring an IoT device to work in a sensor network. Students will create an IoT device based on an ESP8266 microcontroller, implementing various common IoT features, such as analog and digital sensors, a web-based interface, MQTT messaging, and data encryption.