IoT Link: An Internet of Things Prototyping Toolkit

The Internet of Things (IoT) application development is a complex task that requires a wide range of expertise. Currently, the IoT community lacks a development toolkit that enables inexperienced developers to develop IoT prototypes rapidly. Filling this gap, we propose a development toolkit based on a model-driven approach, called IoT Link. IoT Link allows inexperienced developers to compose mash up applications through a graphical domain-specific language that can be easily configured and wired together to create an IoT application. Through visual components, IoT Link encapsulates the complexity of communicating with devices and services on the internet and abstracts them as virtual objects that are accessible through different communication technologies. Consequently, it solves interoperability between heterogeneous IoT components. Based on the visual model, IoT Link is able to generate a complete Java project including an extendable Java code. In a controlled experiment, IoT Link was 42% faster than using a Java library and able to outperform the Java library's user satisfactions.