Intel predicts that by 2020 we will have 200B "smart devices" in the world, an average of 26 smart devices per person.
And in August 2014, IoT was positioned as the most hyped technology in Gartner's Hype cycle.
Surprisingly, a big driver of the IoT ecosystem are startups. AngelList lists 503 companies in this space, with almost 1500 investors. At the SAP Startup Focus team, in the last 4 months, every 1 in 3 startups we talk to is in the IoT space.
As a software engineer, I understand the best way to gain working knowledge of any new technology is to get your hands dirty and build something. So, when my team got an opportunity to demo at the HackerLoundge at this year's Tech-Ed && Dcode, we jumped right in.
In a matter of 3 weeks, we went from complete newbies to showcasing a demo of 2 sensors that sent data to SAP HANA.
We were helped along our journey by experienced colleagues from the SAP Palo Alto D-shop and SAP's IoT PM, Aaron Williams.
Our "technical stack" included:
A wind sensor with an analog output and a flow sensor with a digital output
BeagleBoard which ran BoneScript (based on Node.js)
SAP HANA on AWS to capture the data and visualize it using SAPUI5.
When we started, we had a choice of using an Arduino, a BeagleBone or a Rasberry Pi. Our choice of BeagleBone was driven by the fact that we went through an intro class at the SAP D-shop and we were familiar with JavaScript.
Here is our journey in pictures:
BeagleBone hands-on workshop at the D-shop in Palo Alto
Circuit for the flow sensor
QA of our setup at our team space in Palo Alto
Final setup at SAP TechEd && Dcode