There is a wide variety of IoT devices in use today. The range of designs and ingenuity in function is expanding at a furious pace. The scope of what is being measured, monitored, and tracked would be an entire book in itself. And it is, as you can find several through the publisher of this book.

For analytics purposes, it is helpful to understand the variety of devices and how they are being used. Ideas from one industry can cross-pollinate into another and create unexpected value. The combination of devices and use cases can also present very different analytics opportunities and challenges.

Here is an oversimplified view of the networking protocol stack. There is much more going on here than we will cover in this chapter, but to help in understanding the discussion, it is useful to reduce it to a simple diagram:

Network communications operates in layers with the bottom layers not needing to know about the layers above it. It can get confusing talking about all the options available at each layer of the stack. The diagram shows the key layers that we are concerned with for IoT analytics, but know that there is more to the story.

The diagram is based on the simplified OSI model, which divides communication into five fundamental layers. There is a Physical layer at bottom that has more to do with device electrical engineering. We will leave that out to simplify things since we are focusing on analytics.

Connectivity will refer to options primarily...

Connectivity is all about solving the main problem - establishing a method to communicate. The strategies used are affected by the constraints on the network devices. Power availability often is the most significant one.

The following protocols are specifically designed to address low power constraints. They are usually associated with lower complexity and bit transfer rates in the supported IoT devices.

Named after a tenth...

There are many strategies that IoT networked devices use to transfer data messages. Although connectivity and data messaging can sometimes blend together, we will discuss them separately for simplicity.

Not that it is really all that simple, but we will cover the most commonly used protocols. We will spend more time with the more frequently used ones.

MQTT is the most common data messaging protocol associated with IoT. It is supported by all the major cloud infrastructure providers (AWS, Microsoft, and Google). And it is most likely the protocol that is being used to deliver your data. It was designed for minimal power loss and minimal bandwidth...

Back to the number-one rule in IoT analytics: Never trust data you don't know.

You need to get to know your data. Just like that new guy you just met, you Google him, ask around about him, and do a criminal background check (we know you do) before agreeing to go to dinner with him.

Here is a step-by-step strategy to start to understand the source of the data:

1. Draw a picture of the device: Sketch it out or use blueprints if you have them. This is where you make friends with the design engineer and ask her some questions. Draw the key sensors in the place they are located and note the sensor type and any limitations. Ask about any environmental conditions that affect accuracy and note it.
2. Find out how the device connects to a network: Note the connectivity type on your sketch.
3. Determine what data messaging protocol...