Assessing Versatility of a Generic End‐to‐End Platform for IoT Ecosystem Applications

Availability of efficient development tools for data‐rich IoT applications is becoming ever more important. Such tools should support cross‐platform deployment and seamless and effective applicability in a variety of domains. In this view, we assessed the versatility of an edge‐to‐cloud system featuring Measurify, a framework for managing smart things. The framework exposes to developers a set of measurement‐oriented resources that can be used in different contexts. The tool has been assessed in the development of end‐to‐end IoT applications in six Electronic and Information Technologies Engineering BSc theses that have highlighted the potential of such a system, both from a didactic and a professional point of view. The main design abstractions of the system (i.e., generic sensor configuration, simple language with chainable operations for processing data on the edge, seamless WiFi/GSM communication) allowed developers to be productive and focus on the application requirements and the high‐level design choices needed to define the edge system (microcontroller and its sensors), avoiding the large set‐up times necessary to start a solution from scratch. The experience also highlighted some usability issues that will be addressed in an upcoming release of the system.