TY - JOUR AB - There are many potential applications in the utilities, critical infrastructure monitoring and control and environmental monitoring. This article charts the device-level technologies used in the creation the IoT, including hardware, software and communications. IoT's emergence coincided with the development of radio frequency identification (RFID) technology offering advantages such as the communicable range, ability to write data to a tag, and the possibility of reading multiple tags more efficiently with a single reader. RFID is now just one of many component IoT technologies. We have arrived at a situation where it is practically trivial to integrate computation and communication into any manufactured thing, and it is equally feasible to connect and technologically perceive natural things using communicable sensors. Furthermore, it is possible to react to, and control the environment using embedded computing devices coupled with actuators. Thorough comprehension of functional and non-functional requirements is necessary to develop an effective, efficient design specification for an IoT device. But given the large design space and complexity, there are numerous barriers to entry. As a result, many types of device have been adopted as practical de facto hardware development platforms across research communities, anc hacker and maker communities. In each case, intermediary 'operating systems', designed to simplify their programming by masking hardware complexity, are typically used. Their technical specifications are often not fully disclosed, but they do rely on well- defined standards to ensure the necessary interoperability. The majority of devices are characterised as single board computers. The final design for a market-ready product will likely be as efficient and cost-effective as possible in terms of design, but include sufficient redundancy to support software updates and potential shifts in standards. Since the early 2000s, the wireless sensor network comm AU - Boyle,D AU - Kolcun,R AU - Yeatman,E EP - 31 PY - 2015/// SN - 1755-9278 SP - 26 TI - Devices in the internet of things T2 - Journal of the Institute of Telecommunications Professionals VL - 9 ER -