Internet of Things – Does Particle Photon rely too much on its own cloud solution?

Sammanfattning: Internet of Things is rapidly growing and there are many devices and cloud solutions on the market. This thesis addresses the usage of Particle Photon alongside Microsoft Azure and intends to determine its suitability as an IoT solution. Particle Photon is bundled with Particle Cloud which is a comprehensive solution that makes IoT simple, swift and cheap – but how good is the device if the service ceases to exist? To determine this dependency and its overall IoT suitability, tests were performed to measure transmission limitations as well as reliability both with and without the included cloud service. In addition, the research method includes a Microsoft Azure implementation. The results show that Particle Photon and Microsoft Azure makes a great IoT solution, with or without its own cloud solution – even though most of the ease-of-use and benefits comes from the cloud service. Using Particle Cloud alongside Particle Photon and Microsoft Azure reduces transmission time and increases reliability compared to only using Particle Photon.