An IoT Glossary For Beginners (Part 1)

An IoT Glossary For Beginners (Part 1)

A Beginner’s IoT Glossary
Written for Humans by Humans

So, you’ve heard about the Internet of Things (IoT), and how it can save time and money while preserving your sanity. You may even be researching solutions and talking to suppliers who are throwing out terms—and they expect you to know how it all works and what it means.

But you may not know, so here’s a no-nonsense IoT glossary to help you navigate the basics. Every day, Monnit connects with people who are new to remote monitoring with the IoT. We thought a written-by-humans-for-humans glossary that explains commonly used IoT terms would be helpful.

• Meet Monnit: Our wireless sensors act as the check engine light™ for business. Using IoT technology, our sensors save mom-and-pop butchers money, help protect facilities for multimillion-dollar enterprises, and are used by global franchises for food safety—to name a few applications.
Glossary of IoT Terms

1. Application Programming Interface (API)
An API is a go-between that enables a device or piece of software to communicate with other machines or applications to provide functionality or data access. APIs expedite machine or device implementation, so integration teams don’t need to write new code.
• A simplified example of an API at work: Allowing IoT devices to share data they’ve collected with a company’s proprietary backend software or in-house monitoring systems.

2. Actuator
As the name implies, an actuator is part of a machine that receives an input from a control system to move (actuate) another component. Actuators are categorized by the type of energy used to perform an action—common actuator types include hydraulic, pneumatic, electric, and mechanical. Actuator examples include hand wheels and stepper motors. Within the IoT, actuator activity can be collected by sensors for analysis.

3. Big Data
An exceptionally large set of data, often notable for being high velocity (data collection speed) and highly varied (e.g., videos, data points, and images). The computational analysis of big data enables businesses to discover trends or insights that help shape decision making and process automation.

Want to learn more? See our next video, or visit https://www.monnit.com/blog/2019/09/a-beginners-iot-glossary/

Related Post: