1.
The WoTKit
A Lightweight Tookit for the Web of Things
Mike Blackstock, Rodger Lea
Media and Graphics Interdisciplinary Centre
University of British Columbia
Vancouver, Canada

2.
Position Overview
• Lack of effective toolkits is a significant barrier to
adoption of the web of things
• Balance between functionality and simplicity
• Context
• WoTKit and application experience
• Raised questions related to approach and
features
• Goal: guidelines for WoT toolkit developers
toward basic requirements and approaches

3.
Many Other Toolkits
• High end M2M systems
• Custom solutions
• Not focused on web, sharing
• Similar web-centric toolkits
• Key differences
• what is included
• how services are delivered

4.
Experience
• Remote monitor of pulse oximeter
• Transport and air quality mobile
apps
• Social sustainability applications
• Phidget, Arduino integration
• Zigbee gateways
• CPU monitors
• Power monitoring
• Social network integration

5.
Toolkit Requirements

6.
Toolkit Requirements
• Integration

7.
Toolkit Requirements
• Integration
• Sharing

8.
Toolkit Requirements
• Integration
• Sharing
• Visualizations 100
75
50
25
0
12:05 12:10 12:15 12:20

9.
Toolkit Requirements
• Integration
• Sharing
• Visualizations 100
75
• Processing 50
25
0
12:05 12:10 12:15 12:20

10.
Toolkit Requirements
• Integration
• Sharing
• Visualizations 100
75
• Processing 50
25
• RESTful APIs 0
12:05 12:10 12:15 12:20

11.
Integration
• Basic function of all toolkits
• Easy thing-integration using web servers
and clients
• Toolkit acts as aggregator for thing (meta)
data
• Relay for for actuator control
• Gateways, often simple scripts, update
toolkit with state, connect actuators

12.
Sharing
• Sharing things, data
and components
• Saves integration task
for others
• Allows easy creation
of mashups
• Most existing systems

13.
Visualizations
• Often first task after integration:
see your data
• Sen.se dashboards
• Google Charts, Maps
• ThingSpeak iFrames
• Pachube graphs

14.
Processing
• Pachube triggers
• Sen.se applications
• Paraimpu
connections and
filters
• Pipes and modules

15.
RESTful APIs
• Allows developers to
process and visualize
data in new ways
• incorporate into
complex applications
• integrate “non-thing”
data sources

16.
WoTKit
• Data model: sensors (actuators) with meta data:
• owner
• id, names
• location
• description
• field schema
• Sensor data
• named fields (some defaults)
• server timestamp
• client timestamp

17.
Architecture
• Management and
visualization
• Processing engine
• RESTful API
• Shared data model
• Database and message
broker
• Google Charts, jQuery
UI, Flot, Spring
Framework, ActiveMQ,
MySQL

18.
Processing Engine
• Pipes consist of linked stateful
modules
• Routing table of connected
modules from pipe descriptions.
• Dispatcher thread gets next
task from queue
• Multithreaded executor
performs tasks
• Tasks may add new tasks to the
queue

19.
Open Questions
• Given other emerging systems, and WoTKit
experience
• What are the key requirements for WoT
Toolkits?
• How should these requirements be met?

20.
Thing Model
• Naming things
• human readable names (dns)?
• hierarchical or flat namespace?
• tagging, searching
• Thing representations and schema
• What meta data is shared by things?
• What types of data can they emit and receive?
• what control messages can be sent?

21.
Integration Points
• Sensor data input and output API
• Actuator control API: URL callbacks, long polling, WebSockets
• Visualizations & widgets
• dashboards & widgets?
• apps?
• simple line charts?
• Data processing integration
• apps?
• pipe modules?
• connectors?

22.
Processing and Interaction
• Push or Pull?
• Push: firewall friendly, but events no one is interested in
• Pull: infrastructure polling for unnecessary updates
• Current state and stream of historical values?
• Processing Model
• Event based: alerting and filtering, but no historical data
access
• Query based: historical data, but need to check for change
regularly
• What are the appropriate programming approaches and
APIs? Simple alerts, filters, apps, pipes?

23.
Sharing and Interoperability
• Sharing
• Share via social networks, or do things
have other relationships?
• Toolkit Integration and Standards
• Should we be working for toolkit
interoperability?
• What is the fundamental programming
model and services for all WoT toolkits?

24.
Conclusions
• Exposing things to the web allows
developers to more quickly build IoT
applications.
• Experience with WoTKit has allowed us to
explore toolkit requirements.
• What does it mean to “include batteries”
for a WoT toolkit for rapid mashup
development?