Prototyping the Internet of Things with Web Technologies: Is It Easy?

The objective of this paper is to understand the benefits of Web Technologies for Prototyping the Internet of Things (IoT), particularly JavaScript. We conducted an exploratory case with our students in introductory programming course on JavaScript. Scrum methodology and rapid prototyping is utilized to guide the students final project work. This work was conducted as a part of an ongoing research project on Smart Homes. Within five weeks the students developed fully working prototypes. The results show that students could easily use the JavaScript knowledge both for web and physical IoT-device programming. Additionally, Scrum methodology and rapid prototyping aspects provided a more structured process that helped the students in making quick design decisions, an important aspect specifically considering the constantly emerging IoT technologies. In conclusion, we believe that by simply leveraging well known mechanisms and architectures that Web already has in stake today we can easily build and deploy smart things in the IoT area.