Open Source IoT Platforms & Protocols

A collection of open-source tools, resources, and platforms for building Internet of Things (IoT) solutions.

Resources & Aggregators

• Postscapes IoT Open Source Awards
• 67 Open Source Tools for IoT (TechBeacon)
• Eclipse IoT Industry Working Group

IoT Protocols

• HTTP RESTful: Standard web interface for IoT.
• MQTT (Message Queuing Telemetry Transport): Lightweight publish/subscribe messaging.
• WebSocket: Full-duplex communication over a single TCP connection.
• CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol): Wikipedia
  • Eclipse Californium: Java implementation of CoAP.

Major IoT Platforms

IoTivity

• iotivity/iotivity
  • License: Apache 2.0 | Language: C++, C, Java, Python | Tech: OCF Standards
  • IoTivity is an open-source framework implementing Open Connectivity Foundation (OCF) standards for secure device-to-device communication.

Eclipse Mosquitto

• eclipse/mosquitto
  • License: EPL 2.0 / EDL 1.0 | Language: C, C++ | Tech: MQTT Broker
  • An open-source message broker that implements the MQTT protocol (versions 5.0, 3.1.1, and 3.1).

ThingsBoard

• thingsboard/thingsboard
  • License: Apache 2.0 | Language: Java | Tech: Spring Boot, NoSQL (Cassandra/PostgreSQL)
  • Device management, data collection, processing, and visualization. Supports multi-tenancy and horizontal scalability.

Kaa IoT Platform

• kaaproject/kaa
  • License: Apache 2.0 | Language: Go, Java, TypeScript | Tech: Microservices, Digital Twins
  • A highly flexible middleware platform for developing end-to-end IoT solutions, featuring device management and data analytics.

Mainflux (Now Magistrala)

• mainflux/mainflux
  • License: Apache 2.0 | Language: Go | Tech: Docker, Microservices
  • Industrial IoT messaging and device management server designed to be highly secure and scalable.

Apache iota (Incubating)

• Apache iota
  • Language: Python (Django), Scala (Spark) | Tech: Spark, Redis, Kafka, CockroachDB
  • Built to ingest, analyze, and orchestrate IoT data in a highly distributed and performant fashion.

Specialized Tools & Frameworks

Project Flogo

• tibcosoftware/flogo
  • License: BSD-3-Clause | Language: Go | Tech: Serverless, Edge computing
  • An open-source ecosystem dedicated to simplifying the creation of event-driven, serverless functions and edge microservices.

OpenThread

• openthread/openthread
  • License: BSD-3-Clause | Language: C++ | Tech: Thread Networking Protocol
  • OpenThread is an open-source implementation of the Thread networking protocol by Google, targeted at connected home/building products.

Eclipse Kapua

• Eclipse Kapua
  • Tech: Java, Modular IoT Cloud
  • A modular IoT cloud platform to manage and integrate devices and their data efficiently.

Thinger.io

• thinger-io/thinger.io
  • License: MIT | Language: C++ (Client lib) | Tech: Cloud IoT Platform
  • Helps users prototype, scale, and manage connected products with bidirectional communication tools.

Self-Hosted / Service Categories

• Self-host: Hosting the entire platform on private infrastructure.
• Self-service: Managed platforms with self-service capabilities.
• Self-center / Self-iot: Focus on user-centric or decentralized IoT models.