Updated the 2016/02/06

With my projects, I want to build a complete IoT chain.
I don't picture IoT with the common smartphone/bluetooth pattern, but more like a network of objects, connected to an entity which interpret values and gives the appropriate orders if necessary.

Today, I picture it like that :

Notes

Connected to the Cloud

You can notice that I don't want to send orders to my objects at home, but always use a connection to the Internet. My home is always connected to the Internet, and if an object really needs a permanent connection, I could do 3G for this object.

As cheap as possible

We can see a lot of great electronic solutions on the Internet which I could use.
However, I want to use cheap solutions, for simplicity and as a hobby should.
I will almost always use Arduino and ESP8266 modules. Maybe later, I will also use ATtiny85 solutions, ESP-32... but let's begin small :)

Some solutions that I wish I could use :

• Moteino, Arduino low power consumption and RF radio ($10-$16)
• Intel Edison, Intels IoT solution for complex use, and deep pockets ($90 for the dev kit)

Power supply

If you looked closely to my diagram, you should have noticed the little plug / battery icons.
I don't want to have to plug each of my objects to the main power supply.
This point is very important, because we will have to take power consumption in consideration, and find ways to optimise hardware / software with cheap components.
My goal is to let objects run on few AA batteries for more than a year. I hope reach that goal !

Sigfox / LoRa integration

I didn't add Sigfox or LoRa connection on my diagram. As fun it could be to use such networks, I don't plan to commercialize my object. As such, these networks are unreachable for me.
However, these networks use a hardware + software gateway, which could be integrated to this diagram.

What's next ?

I think that the next step is to build some objects and check if this solution is the good one !
I will update this post throughout the projects.