The document discusses the challenges and current state of interoperability in the Internet of Things (IoT), highlighting the pitfalls of existing standardization efforts that often replicate previous mistakes, such as those seen with SOAP. It emphasizes the importance of designing APIs for IoT devices using modern practices like JSON, URIs, and REST, in order to promote ease of use and developer accessibility. The author advocates for a focus on creating unique identifiers and effective communication methods to improve interoperability across various IoT applications.

1. Interoperability
with Standardless IoT

2. David Janes
@dpjanes
davidjanes@iotdb.org
http://iotdb.org/social/imadeit/
April 2015

3. I: Introduction
Party Like It’s 199[0-9]

5. All Teh Standardz!
• Open Interconnect Consortium
• Thread Group
• AllSeen Alliance
• HyperCat Consortium
• Industrial Internet Consortium
• IoT-GSI
• oneM2M
• Open Mobile Alliance
• Internet of Things (IEE)
• IETF
• IPSO Alliance
• W3C Web of Things Community
Group
• W3C Semantic Sensor Network
• ITU Joint Coordination Activity
on IoT

6. Commonalities
• Prescriptive - “Here’s how you do this”
• Roach Motel - “Once you go in you can
never go out”
• Complicated - Can a N00b pick it up and
use it?

7. XKCD was wrong

8. Antistandards
• The industry is actively trying to create
more standards
• IMO: malice
• “Win the stack”

9. We’ve Been Here
• InternetVideo
• XML
• RPC
• SOAP

10. What’s wrong now?
• Most IoT Standardization efforts are an
attempt to recreate the SOAP mistake
• SOAP is not the way to do things
• But how do we do things?…

11. II:APIs in 2015

13. We know how to write
APIs

14. How to Write APIs
• Resources have IDs
• Use JSON (rarely XML)
• Use URIs and HATEOAS
• Use REST
• Use HTTP

15. Big Problems Solved:
• Format, Documentation, Navigation
• Authentication, Authorization, Encryption,
Security
• Create, Update, List, Delete
• Notifications

16. Are you doing it
correctly?
• “Can Joe / Jane Developer pick it up and be
using it within 10 minutes”

17. III: So…
(Here comes the important part)

19. What is the #IoT?

20. What is the #IoT?
The IoT is adding APIs
to Things

21. IV:What do Thing APIs
Look Like

23. How to Write
Thing APIs
• Resources Things have IDs
• Use JSON (rarely XML)
• Use URIs and HATEOAS
• Use REST
• Use HTTP
• Notifications? MQTT?

24. ERMAHGERD!
So Inefficient
• Don’t prematurely optimize
• JSON: can be packed into Binary
• HTTP: substitute HTTP/2 or CoAP
• + importantly: interoperability

25. V: Interoperability
(This is what the talk is about, remember!)

27. How? Design Patterns
• Discovery
• Unique Repeatable IDs for Things
• Update via PUT
• State via GET
• Metadata / Reachability

28. Discovery
• Statically defined v Dynamic
• May find the same Thing multiple ways
• Things come and go

29. ID
• Globally Unique ID for all Things
• Many (but not all) Things provide UUIDs
• Many advantages

30. PUT / PUSH
• Just like REST
• IOTDB provides a “Semantic” Layer
• e.g. volume to 50% means the same on all
platforms

31. GET / PULL State
• Tricky!
• State is usually only known asynchronously

32. Metadata
• Name
• Product, Manufacturer
• Device
• Reachable

33. Semantics
{
"on": true,
"temperature": 225
}

34. VI: Not Hypothetical

36. HomeStar
• homestar-ble
• homestar-denon-avr
• homestar-feed
• homestar-firmata
• homestar-hue
• homestar-lg-smart-tv
• homestar-lifx
• homestar-littlebits
• homestar-rest
• homestar-smart-things
• homestar-sonos
• homestar-template
• homestar-tcp
• homestar-wemo

37. Via Node.JS
iot
.connect("DenonAVR")
.update({
"on": true,
"volume": 0.4
})

38. Semantically
iot
.connect()
.with_zone("Basement")
.with_facet(":lighting")
.set(“:on": false)

41. Get the code
• github.com/dpjanes
• iotdb-homestar
• homestar-*

42. Get in touch!
David Janes
@dpjanes
davidjanes@iotdb.org
http://iotdb.org/social/imadeit/