Welcome to the IoTempire.
IoTempire is an open association and community network of open-source IoT-minded people: makers, educators, researchers, artists, engineers, and institutions. We are a central place to meet other IoT enthusiasts, publish projects and experimentation results, and discuss — and help solve — the problems that come with connecting the physical world.
This site is a deliberately lightweight, mostly static hub: it collects information, links, and teaching material rather than hosting day-to-day discussion. Day-to-day exchange happens in our community channels. If you have an article, project, or community you would like listed here, just reach out to one of the council members. News and current writing now live on ulno.net’s self-hosted blog: blog.ulno.net.
Most of what is offered and linked here is free of charge and open source. We also link to commercial offerings that have an active community behind them, and we say so where that is the case.
What we stand for
- Developing and shaping a sustainable, sensible IoT.
- Bridging the corporate and maker worlds, and artists and engineers.
- A middle ground between industry and academia, with a strong focus on education and pedagogy.
- Privacy and security by design — pushing back against the Internet of Broken Things.
- Respecting and integrating the arts as a driver of creativity and risk-free experimentation.
- Interoperability and opening otherwise closed systems.
- Building the reputation of all community members as technology integrators.
Read the full mission statement →
Quick navigation
About
Who we are, what we intend, and what you can list and find here.
Projects
Notable projects and frameworks we use and support.
Workshops & teaching
Free learning material plus hands-on classes and workshops by our members.
Communities
Where to find like-minded people — and our community covenant.
Resources
Curated links to relevant IoT topics, security, and fun.
Council
Committed members you can contact with feedback or concerns.
The software: IoTempower
Our community software framework is IoTempower — a framework and environment that makes the Internet of Things accessible to everyone, with a strong focus on education, privacy, and security. Everything we teach is built on open-source software with permissive licenses, so it is affordable and easy to replicate.
- iotempower.us — documentation and guides
- GitHub: iotempire/iotempower — source code
- GitHub: iotempire-teaching — course material
Who is behind this
IoTempire is driven by ulno (Ulrich Norbisrath, Professor for Distributed and Edge Computing at HSBI, Campus Gütersloh), Ruben Jubeh (Professor for the Internet of Things at OTH Regensburg), and Renato Perotto Machado (visual artist and PhD student at the University of Tartu). It was co-founded with Michael Schloh von Bennewitz and shaped by a wider circle of early contributors — see the council.