A design approach to adapting maker community projects to the IoT constrained device philosophy

Abstract

Internet of Things (IoT) advocates promise huge benefits but what technical challenges does the maker community face in order to participate in this new technological wave? We report on our experience in incorporating a maker community friendly weather station with an IoT system and in so doing identified the low energy design philosophy as a challenge not previously significant in Internet-connected systems. This challenge highlights some of the restrictions that the IoT design philosophy poses on the maker community. Our research approach was well suited for this challenge. We describe the Design Science Research approach followed, the challenge that the resource constrained IoT system posed, and our solution to this challenge.