Off the shelf IoT supporting services

[tsachi]

Hi,

I'm trying to design an IoT device.. and while crunching the idea I've notice that some of the "infrastructure" components aren't really unique for my project. So, I was wondering if any of you guys is familiar with any such off-the-shelf services.

The services that I'm looking for are :
1. resources allocation server. during the manufacturing, after the controller completed it's self-testing, I would like it to connect to the internet and
   "download" some settings. ( i.e. MAC address, cryptographic keys, etc).
2. firmware upgrade server. I want to have the IoT device to perform periodic tests to see if firmware upgrades are available. It need to be secured, yet, simple to use. ( Full scale SSL library might not be possible due to the controller's memory constrains )
3. Web proxy via reverse HTTP server. I haven't seen too many implementation for that, although it *should* be available. The key is to make a complete & secured solution.

 Tsachi

[krapht]

There's tons. Everybody wants to own this market. But if it were my product, I would stick to Amazon and Google's offerings, just because they are so gigantic that they will be able to offer the best pricing on cloud services.

[tszaboo]

SAP and IBM has something to offer for IoT!

Burst out laughing...

[tsachi]

There's tons. Everybody wants to own this market. But if it were my product, I would stick to Amazon and Google's offerings, just because they are so gigantic that they will be able to offer the best pricing on cloud services.

The physical server itself isn't the issue. What I'm looking for is the missing software pieced.
For instance, for #1, the server would likely need to:
1. have a list of available MAC address ranges.
2. have a list of previously allocated MAC address per unique h/w id.
3. allocate new MAC address and register it ( so we won't "waste" MAC addresses )
4. provide communication with device. ( HTTP ? TCP ? UDP ? other ? )
5. (maybe) some form of data backup would be a nice to have.

I *could* implement this myself using (for example) WINDOWS/IIS/MSSQL, but before spending the time doing this, I want to see
whether there are already off the shelf solution that would do that.

[tsachi]

SAP and IBM has something to offer for IoT!

Burst out laughing...

Sure they do.. and so does everybody else.
Yet, I haven't seen any offering for these types of servers when googling it..

I'm sure that some of these services do exist, but I haven't seen them as a complete product offering.

If you could point to a concrete service, it would be great!

Tsachi

[tszaboo]

SAP and IBM has something to offer for IoT!

Burst out laughing...

Sure they do.. and so does everybody else.
Yet, I haven't seen any offering for these types of servers when googling it..

I'm sure that some of these services do exist, but I haven't seen them as a complete product offering.

If you could point to a concrete service, it would be great!

Tsachi

You dont want to do anything with either of these companies. They probably provide you a customised solution (so they claim), including a bunch of consultants sitting in your office and draining your blood until you have none left.
If you must, this is two link, but you have been warned:
http://go.sap.com/belgique/product/technology-platform/iot-platform-cloud.html
http://www.ibm.com/internet-of-things/

[Howardlong]

SAP and IBM has something to offer for IoT!

Burst out laughing...

Sure they do.. and so does everybody else.
Yet, I haven't seen any offering for these types of servers when googling it..

I'm sure that some of these services do exist, but I haven't seen them as a complete product offering.

If you could point to a concrete service, it would be great!

Tsachi

You dont want to do anything with either of these companies. They probably provide you a customised solution (so they claim), including a bunch of consultants sitting in your office and draining your blood until you have none left.
If you must, this is two link, but you have been warned:
http://go.sap.com/belgique/product/technology-platform/iot-platform-cloud.html
http://www.ibm.com/internet-of-things/

Well I laughed out loud reading those, what is it that either of those offerings doing that has anything specifically to do with IoT other than using the acronym in the marketing?

Certainly smells very much like a pimping operation, targeted at Gartner and whitepaper reading management types.

[tsachi]

Yes; that's exactly my point.
I'm looking for *simple* and standalone services that can be easily integrated.

If I were to look at IBM/SAP solutions, it would take me many months just to evaluate them and many $$$ spent regardless if those services would do the job or not. ( since the operating costs of these services might be quite expensive )

Maybe the IoT wasn't the right title for this discussion. It's not really about IoT at all.
It's just that connected devices typically require:
1. initial configuration.
2. live updates
3. remote administration

Tsachi

[nfmax]

Although I have not used it myself, IBM have a Bluemix cloud product http://www.ibm.com/cloud-computing/bluemix/ which has an IoT applications category. IBM Emerging Technologies Group at Hursley have developed the NodeRED environment, which you can run on Bluemix or download and run on your own Node.js platform - a Raspberry Pi or BeagleBoneblack work just fine. It's open source (Apache License) and available over npm and on GitHub. I've made use of Node-RED on OS X, Linux, and Windows machines (not in the cloud) and have also contributed into it.

[tsachi]

Maybe my "filtering" is slightly too harsh, but, any company that advertise that the can do all sort of amazing IoT things while omitting the technical details from their publications ( i.e. web site ), is most likely not the service I'm looking for.

My view of IoT is of light-weighted controllers. Therefore, any solution that would require, for example, a linux installation or some complicated SSL cryptography ( on the device ) might not be a viable solution.

A "good" solution ( from a different industry ) would be Teamcity (https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/)
They offer a free downloadable demo, plus tons of documentation.

nfmax - thanks for the reference. I'll check that out!

[Howardlong]

My view of IoT is of light-weighted controllers. Therefore, any solution that would require, for example, a linux installation or some complicated SSL cryptography ( on the device ) might not be a viable solution.

Indeed, as is mine, although I'd go further. A light-weight solution that directly talks routable IP without the need for proprietary gateways. That is the problem of bullshit terms like IoT, it becomes meaningless once the marketing and sales types get their hands on it.

[janoc]

Well, you will perhaps change your mind re crypto the moment your customer's controllers get hacked into and are used to spy on them/get fried by some kiddie with a bunch of scripts/burn down their houses ... Internet is full of examples of this.

Connecting a widget directly to the Internet without proper crypto in place - i.e. secure authentication and encrypting the traffic (= stuff SSL is designed for) is a really terrible idea. Unfortunately, for the most designers of these gizmos the basic information security is an afterthought at best.

[tsachi]

Well, you will perhaps change your mind re crypto the moment your customer's controllers get hacked into and are used to spy on them/get fried by some kiddie with a bunch of scripts/burn down their houses ... Internet is full of examples of this.

Connecting a widget directly to the Internet without proper crypto in place - i.e. secure authentication and encrypting the traffic (= stuff SSL is designed for) is a really terrible idea. Unfortunately, for the most designers of these gizmos the basic information security is an afterthought at best.

janoc, I do understand the importance of secure communication. In my previous post I was referring specifically to the generic openssl implementation, which tends to be quite demanding on device resources. One of the reasons that I'm looking for existing solution is exactly that; I want to take a working and viable solution instead of implementing it myself and taking the focus off the main product.

As an example, if the server is going to support n bit encryption on Y protocol, there is no reason that the device would have the logic to decode m bit encryption on Z protocol, right ?

Tsachi

Tsachi

[Howardlong]

Well, you will perhaps change your mind re crypto the moment your customer's controllers get hacked into and are used to spy on them/get fried by some kiddie with a bunch of scripts/burn down their houses ... Internet is full of examples of this.

Connecting a widget directly to the Internet without proper crypto in place - i.e. secure authentication and encrypting the traffic (= stuff SSL is designed for) is a really terrible idea. Unfortunately, for the most designers of these gizmos the basic information security is an afterthought at best.

No-one ever stated it would be directly connected to the internet, or that device based and other protections such as NAT and firewalls would not be in place just like the PC or device that you just typed that from.

While I agree that security concerns are too often an afterthought, you've read far more into what was stated than you needed to.

My point was, and still is, that proprietary application layer gateways that, for example, convert Zigbee devices to suddenly be "Internet of Things", is marketing BS. Either the device talks IP or it doesn't. There is marketing confusion that wireless means Internet, when it doesn't. That was my point.

And by the way, I'd love to see all those examples of script kiddies burning down houses, and crashing their drones into puppy farms. Just kidding on that last one, by the way.

[savril]

My view of IoT is of light-weighted controllers. Therefore, any solution that would require, for example, a linux installation or some complicated SSL cryptography ( on the device ) might not be a viable solution.

Your option has the advantage of being plug and play and cheap (no need for 32 bits ?C).

For christmas, I gave my dad a raspberry pi, an arduino with a RFLink 433Mhz tranceiver, and an install of domoticz.
After a couple hours, it has discovered more than 50 devices on the neighborhood : lot of switchs, sensors, ...
That included my dad garage door which was switchable without any security protection...
That kind of installation need no special skills, you can buy all that things ready made and the installation is as simple as flashing a raspberry pi SD card.

So I care about radio devices being secure. Nowadays you can not think of something as secure if any script kiddy kid can hack it.