Could you make the killer app for the Internet of Things?

As more and more devices become connected to the Internet, there are fantastic new opportunities for developers in the Internet of Things (IoT). An entire industry has been built around personal fitness apps, as people use sensors and phones to track their performance while running or training.

Some people laugh at the idea of connecting a fridge to the Internet, but when there’s no milk for the coffee on a dark winter’s morning, the idea of integrating online shopping with the fridge doesn’t seem quite so daft. As we gain the ability to connect, measure and control the devices around us, our world will be transformed. The developers who make the killer apps for the Internet of Things, whatever they turn out to be, will get very rich indeed.

Intel has created a set of resources that will help you to get started with developing Internet of Things applications today. The Intel IoT Developer Kit provides a complete set of hardware and software. The hardware includes the Intel Galileo and Intel Edison boards, sensors and related components. Galileo is an Arduino-certified board based on Intel technology, and Edison is a low-cost, general purpose compute platform ideal for entrepreneurs building commercial IoT applications. The software gives you the choice of developing with the Arduino IDE, Eclipse or visual programming language Wyliodrin (Galileo only). There is also a Cloud Analytics platform you can use to start collecting and analysing data without making huge investments in storage and compute capacity.

As you might expect, there’s plenty of documentation on Intel Developer Zone, including code samples in Javascript and Wyliodrin to get started with a selection of sensors and actuators.

If you need (or would like to offer!) help with IoT questions, drop in the Internet of Things Forum on Intel Developer Zone.

Now seems to be the perfect time for developers to start learning IoT development. Having those skills will enable them to strike quickly when the right idea and opportunity collide, perhaps creating a device we’ll all use one day, but which none of us can yet imagine.

• This blog post is written by Softtalkblog, and is sponsored by the Intel Developer Zone, which helps you to develop, market and sell software and apps for prominent platforms and emerging technologies powered by Intel Architecture.

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