[Development] Qt and IoT infographic

[Thiago Macieira]

On Tuesday, 29 August 2017 10:35:05 PDT Jason H wrote:
> I think the ideal tech solution here is not to do one or the other, rather
> both, in a layered approach. Use the HTTP/REST and provide a translation
> layer to CoAP. They make a statement about it being really close, so it
> shouldn't be that hard to proxy down/up to a full-on REST server?

My colleagues in Intel Finland already have that. Using Node.js though.

> I'm not saying re-write apache or node anything like that. (Although node
> libraries in QML would be great!) I'm only suggesting that we make Qt able
> to trivially provide data to the web in both a conceptually easy and easy
> to implement way.

FamousLastWords™

> There is a pretty big gulf between MCUs and the IoT.
> Yeah, I've got Aurduino (even a uCSimm), various Pis and BeagleBoards, but
> with the Pi Zero at $5, it's the same price as an Arduino, and it runs Qt
> no problem.

Research shows NO ONE deploys Arduino for real products. It's a maker toy, 
stuff hobbyists use to make one-off things and some professional makers use 
for initial prototyping. When they get serious, Arduino goes out the window 
and they get real boards.

The Pi Zero doesn't cost *you* $5 if you want to make modifications. It costs 
$5 only due to the volume discount of the seller. If you want to modify the 
board, like for example depopulate it and remove some things you don't need, 
your price may actually rise instead of going down.

> The calculus that has to be made is if IoT will be in
> quantities where costing < $5 but more than pennies will inhibit a market.

I think it will. I think we'll see on smart devices's "smartness" costing 
$0.50. But those are the tiny MCUs we've been talking about.

The gap between those and the 512-MB devices is huge.

> I think IoT is not currently suffering from that as most IoT things I think
> of are luxury projects where a $5 CPU isn't cost prohibitive. Meanwhile,
> you've got the whole Moore's law thing going on. If it takes Qt 3 years to
> whittle down to fit on a board, or just quadruple the resources, then it's
> a wash. I don't see Qt reaching down much lower than a Raspberry Pi Zero.

Agreed, I don't see it reaching much lower than that either. Like I said, I 
think 32 MB RAM and 1 GB storage is a reasonable, albeit already difficult 
target.

But I don't see the power of the devices going up. Instead, we'll see the 
other effect of Moore's Law: the price for the same capacity go down. So what 
costs $0.50 today will cost $0.125 in 3 years.

> The future of IoT development isn't reaching down, its gluing things
> together with a minimal level of effort while prices on the more advanced
> stuff plummet and capabilities increase. There maybe a market for a
> lower-end CPUs reaching into the MCU space, but I just don't see Qt going
> there.

Right. I don't think Qt needs to run on the MCU space.

Qt needs to *consume* the data provided by the MCUs. And yes, it needs to 
provide data for larger integration.

-- 
Thiago Macieira - thiago.macieira (AT) intel.com
  Software Architect - Intel Open Source Technology Center