Here we list some of the most popular IoT boards and cloud services, available in the market at the time of writing this book, with some of their important specifications and features. These tables should help you to get an idea as to where Particle products fit in on the IoT map.
The next table lists the main specifications of popular IoT boards. These specifications are the basic details one has to consider while selecting a board—its specifications in terms of processor and speed, memory, available communication modules and ports, and IO pins. Also, while selecting a board, one has to analyze and match the project's requirements with the available boards, so that the right board is selected for the application in terms of fitment and performance.
|
Board Name |
Microcontroller |
Microprocessor |
Memory |
Modules |
Ports |
IO Pins |
|
Raspberry Pi 1/2/3 |
Broadcom SoC BCM2835/6/7 |
Single/Quad-core ARM 11/Cortex-A7/A53 CPU, VideoCore IV GPU |
256 MB/512 MB/1 GB RAM |
Ethernet, Wi-Fi, Serial UART, I2C |
HDMI, USB, Ethernet (RJ45), GPIO |
26/40/40 |
|
Arduino Mini |
ATmega328 |
NA |
32 KB Flash
2 KB SRAM
|
NA |
NA |
14 |
|
Arduino Yun |
ATmega32u4 |
Atheros AR9331 |
32 KB Flash
2.5 KB SRAM,
16 MB Flash, 64 MB RAM
|
Wi-Fi, Ethernet |
USB, Ethernet (RJ45) |
20 |
|
Intel Edison |
MCU at 100 MHz ( Intel Atom Soc) |
Dual-core CPU at 500 MHz (Intel Atom Soc) |
4 GB Flash, 1 GB RAM |
Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0 |
USB, UART, SPI, GPIO |
28 |
|
Libelium Waspmote |
ATmega1281 |
NA |
128 KB Flash, 8 KB SRAM |
Temp, humidity, light sensors, (optional) GPS |
UART, I2C, SPI, USB |
19 |
|
NodeMCU ESP8266 |
ESP 8266 SoC |
ESP-12 module |
4 MB Flash |
Wi-Fi,
Serial UART,
ADC
|
UART, GPIO, SPI |
14 |
|
BeagleBone Black |
Sitara SoC AM3358/9 |
AM335x 1 GHz ARM Cortex-A8 |
512 MB RAM, 2/4 GB flash storage |
Ethernet, Serial UART, ADC, I2C |
Ethernet (RJ45), HDMI, USB, GPIO |
24 |
|
CubieBoard |
ARM Cortex-A8 CPU |
AllWinner A10 SoC |
512 MB/ 1 GB RAM, 4 GB flash memory |
Ethernet, Serial UART, ADC, I2C |
Ethernet (RJ45) , USB, SATA |
96 |
Table 3: IoT development boards
It is important to know what kind of cloud service we will be dealing with, and whether our board has open standards and allows us to use our own personal service easily, or whether the board-provided service needs some manipulation to use in the current project.
|
Cloud service name |
Salient features |
|
Amazon Web Services
Microsoft Azure
(https://azure.microsoft.com/)
Cloud Foundry
(https://www.cloudfoundry.org/)
IBM Bluemix
(http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/)
|
Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides virtual machine (VM), storage, application services, deployment and management, mobile and device services, and big data analytics. |
|
Parse
Kinvey
AnyPresence
Appcelerator
(http://www.appcelerator.com/)
|
mBaaS provides ways to link mobile apps to backend cloud storage, user management, push notifications, and integration with social networking services. |
|
ThingWorx
|
M2M offering
from PTC (http://www.ptc.com/)
|
Table 4: Cloud services