You can't spell IoT without "Internet"

This series is called the Internet of Things, so having internet access is obviously going to be one of the common service-desires! As we’ve shown in the Protocols video, there’s thousands of API’s available, from the common news/stocks/weather and beyond. Many of the available IoT services support this sort of functionality by allowing you to create “event listeners” -  specific conditions that run code on the host service to issue a REST call, often referred to as a “webhook,” to a remote server. You can use this feature to easily integrate your service with almost any REST API on the Internet.

For example, perhaps you want your weather station to publish an update to your web site or post a status message to Twitter. In your service’s administration console, you would configure a custom listener to watch for a specific event to occur, such as a temperature update event. The exact logic of when the event should fire is customized using a plugin or some scripting language provided by the service. For example, you might want the service to trigger an update on your website with one REST call, and then conditionally publish a message through Twitter’s API with another REST call, but only if the temperature is above a certain threshold.

You can even use this functionality to connect multiple IoT services together. You might choose one service for its robust data storage and event processing features, and then use a webhook to connect your core service platform to another service that you prefer for analytics. Event listeners, custom functions, and webhooks provide a surprisingly versatile way to build custom business logic on top of your application. And, for the most popular APIs on the Internet, you’ll often have a ready-to-go plugin provided.