IoT Design Methodology and Platform Flashcards

Vocabulary flashcards covering Unit II: IoT Design Methodology and Platform topics including system design steps, microcontrollers, single-board computers, sensors, actuators, and smart sensor architectures.

Physical Entity

Physically identifiable objects in the environment about which an IoT system provides information using sensors or upon which it performs actuation.

Virtual Entity

A digital representation of a physical entity in the digital world, where every physical entity corresponds to a virtual entity.

Resource

Software components in an IoT domain model, which can be either hosted on the device (on-device resources like operating systems) or available on the network (network-resources like databases).

Service (IoT Domain Model)

Software interfaces used to interact with a physical entity by accessing resources to perform operations on it or retrieve its status.

Fog Computing

A decentralized computing infrastructure where data, compute, storage, and applications are positioned between the data source and the cloud, providing real-time data processing with millisecond response time.

Edge Computing

A computing paradigm executed on site or near a specific data source, reducing the requirement to send and process data in a remote data center.

Time-to-prototype

The time metric required to build a functioning, working initial version of an IoT system.

NRE Cost (Non-Recurring Engineering Cost)

The one-time monetary cost associated with designing and developing a system.

Arduino UNO R3

An 8-bit development board powered by the ATmega328P microcontroller with 14 digital input/output pins, 6 analog inputs, a $16\,MHz$ clock speed, $32\,kB$ flash memory, $2\,kB$ SRAM, and $1\,kB$ EEPROM.

Arduino Zero

A 32-bit development board extending the Arduino UNO form factor, powered by the Atmel SAMD21 MCU (ARM Cortex-M0+ core at $48\,MHz$) operating at $3.3\,V$ with an integrated Embedded Debugger (EDBG).

Arduino Nano ESP32

An IoT board featuring the ESP32-S3 microcontroller within the NORA-W106 module from u-blox, operating at $240\,MHz$ clock speed with $384\,kB$ ROM, $512\,kB$ SRAM, and $16\,MB$ external flash memory.

Raspberry Pi 4 Model B

A single-board computer powered by a Broadcom BCM2711 quad-core processor (up to $8\,GB$ SDRAM), capable of running Linux OS and serving as a high-performance IoT gateway or multimedia hub.

NodeMCU Firmware

An open-source, event-driven, asynchronous firmware using Lua scripting that runs on ESP8266 and ESP32 Wi-Fi chips and utilizes an on-module SPIFFS file system.

ESP32

A dual-core 32-bit microcontroller created by Espressif Systems featuring built-in Wi-Fi ($802.11\,b/g/n$) and Bluetooth/BLE connectivity, clock speeds up to $240\,MHz$, and support for real-time operating systems like FreeRTOS.

Sensor

A device that detects a physical phenomenon (e.g., temperature, force, displacement) and converts it into a proportional output signal (e.g., electrical, mechanical, magnetic).

Actuator

A device that converts a control signal and energy source (electrical, pneumatic, hydraulic, thermal, or magnetic) into mechanical motion or physical action.

Transducer

An umbrella term for energy conversion devices (encompassing both sensors and actuators) that convert a signal from one physical form into another.

Active Sensors

Sensors that require an external power or excitation signal to perform sensing functions and generate output signals.

Passive Sensors

Sensors that directly generate an output signal in response to physical stimuli without requiring any external power source.

Sensitivity

A static sensor characteristic defined as the ratio of the change in output signal to a unit change in the measured input physical quantity.

Limit Switch

A mechanical contact switch equipped with a pressure-sensitive mechanical arm that energizes an ON/OFF circuit when physically actuated by an object.

Inductive Proximity Sensor

A non-contact electronic sensor that utilizes AC or DC driven circuitry to generate electromagnetic fields for detecting metallic (ferrous) targets.

Smart Sensor

An integrated sensing device containing a transducer, built-in processing unit (MPU/MCU), power management, and communication interfaces to perform autonomous filtering, self-calibration, and digital data generation for IoT networks.

Network Capable Application Processor (NCAP)

The hardware and software entity defined in the IEEE 1451 standard that functions as a gateway between Transducer Interface Modules (TIMs) and a user network or host processor.

Proximity Sensor Comparison

A classification of non-contact proximity sensors comparing sensing ranges and target materials across Inductive ($<4\text{--}40\,mm$ for ferrous metals), Capacitive ($<3\text{--}60\,mm$ for non-ferrous and liquids), Photoelectric ($<1\,mm\text{--}60\,mm$ for general targets), and Ultrasonic ($<30\,mm\text{--}3\,mm$ for target materials insensitive to color/reflectivity).