Writing and connecting IoT and mobile applications in MIT App Inventor

Abstract

As the "Internet of Things" (IoT) grows and becomes more prevalent in society, it is important that everyone is able to understand and take advantage of IoT technology. I present the IoT Embedded Companion, a system integrated with MIT App Inventor that allows users to design and program IoT applications alongside a mobile app. This system uses the same block-based programming language as MIT App Inventor and includes live development features that allow users to see changes to their application in real-time while it runs on the mobile device and IoT device. The resulting projects consist of a mobile application and autonomous IoT program that together create the IoT application. Both the mobile app and the IoT program share global variables that either system can read and write, allowing the components to act together as a single application. In addition to writing the IoT Embedded Companion, I designed a curriculum for a workshop to teach and test the IoT Embedded Companion targeting middle-school aged students and held two iterations of the workshop. My findings indicate that students as young as middle school level are able to understand the concepts of IoT and that learning about it expands their knowledge of computing capabilities.