The Internet of Things is a large basketful of things. It is in fact so large that no one can see its edges yet. It is an evolving and quickly expanding repo of products, concepts, fledgling business ventures, prototypes, middleware, ersatz systems, and hardware.

Some define IoT as connecting things that are not normally connected, thus making them a bit more useful than they were as unconnected devices.

We will not show you how to turn off the lights in your house using the BBB, or how to autoraise the garage door when you drive onto your street. There are a bunch of tutorials that do that already. Instead, we will take a look at some of the recipes that provide some fundamental elements for building IoT-centric prototypes or demos.