Experiences in integrating Internet of Things and cloud services with the robot operating system

New Internet of Things open source technologies, middlewares, and programming languages, make the quick integration of devices, systems and cloud services easier than never before. With their utilization, complex tasks such as object detection, tracking and tracing, can be easily realized, even by embedded devices in a fraction of time. The interplay of highly heterogeneous IoT devices and open source software, has been utilized in this work as a learning tool, in order to train developers and enhance their IoT skills. By designing, implementing, testing and deploying a rapid prototype, new knowledge is acquired, assessment of technologies and concepts is carried out, and the end-result, although developed in a constraint timeframe, is technologically promising, cost-effective and feature-rich. This work sheds some light on the prototype implemented and discusses the developer experiences and benefits of this IoT integration hands-on approach.