IoT Development Consulting
StepTo delivers IoT software development and consulting: firmware, device management, data pipelines, and cloud connectivity for industrial devices.
Reviewed by Igor Gazivoda, Co-founder & CEO of StepTo · Updated
StepTo's IoT development consulting covers the full device-to-cloud stack: firmware on the device, connectivity, cloud ingestion, device management, and the dashboards and apps where the data becomes useful. We build this stack for industrial equipment makers, smart-building operators, logistics companies, and connected-product startups, from a first proof of concept to fleets of thousands of devices. Serbian engineering rates of $35–75/hr for most delivery work keep multi-year IoT programmes affordable.
What IoT Solutions Does StepTo Deliver?
- Embedded firmware: C/C++ on FreeRTOS, Zephyr, and bare metal for ESP32, STM32, and Nordic nRF targets, including power optimisation for battery devices, secure boot, and OTA updates.
- Device management platforms: Provisioning, fleet monitoring, remote configuration, firmware rollout with staged deployment and rollback, and certificate lifecycle management.
- Cloud IoT architecture: Ingestion and processing on AWS IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub, or self-hosted MQTT brokers (EMQX, Mosquitto), with time-series storage in TimescaleDB or InfluxDB.
- Data pipelines & analytics: Stream processing for alerting and anomaly detection, downsampling and retention policies, and dashboards for operations teams (Grafana or custom React frontends).
- Mobile & web apps: Customer-facing apps for device onboarding (BLE/Wi-Fi pairing), monitoring, and control, plus internal tools for support and field service.
- Industrial integration: Bridging shop-floor equipment (Modbus, OPC UA, CAN) into modern cloud platforms, ERPs, and maintenance systems.
Which IoT Protocols and Networks Do We Work With?
- Device-to-cloud: MQTT/MQTTS, CoAP, HTTP, WebSockets, selected for bandwidth, battery, and reliability constraints.
- Radio & network: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth Low Energy, LoRaWAN for long-range low-power sensing, NB-IoT and LTE-M for cellular fleets.
- Edge computing: Local processing and buffering on gateways (Linux/containers) for sites with unreliable connectivity or low-latency control requirements.
How Much Does an IoT Project Cost and How Long?
- Feasibility & architecture (2–4 weeks): Hardware selection review, connectivity choice, cloud cost modelling, and security design.
- Proof of concept (6–10 weeks, $25,000–$60,000): One device type streaming real data to a live dashboard, enough to validate the business case.
- Production platform (5–9 months, $100,000–$300,000): Provisioning, OTA, alerting, multi-tenant dashboards, and apps, hardened for scale.
- Fleet operation: Ongoing evolution with a dedicated team from $13,500/month or staff augmentation from $4,500/month per engineer, see pricing.
Why StepTo for IoT?
- Full-stack ownership: Firmware, cloud, and apps from one team, no finger-pointing between an embedded shop and a web agency when something breaks in between.
- Security by design: Per-device certificates, mutual TLS, signed firmware, and update strategies designed before the first device ships, when fixing them is still cheap.
- Operations mindset: We design for the unglamorous realities, certificate expiry, failed OTA rollouts, flaky connectivity, that determine whether a fleet survives year three.
- CET timezone: Real-time collaboration with European hardware teams and same-day overlap with US product organisations.
Which Industries Use the IoT Systems We Build?
- Industrial & manufacturing: Machine condition monitoring, energy metering, predictive maintenance triggers, and OEE data feeding MES/ERP systems.
- Smart buildings & energy: HVAC and lighting control, occupancy analytics, submetering, and tenant-facing dashboards for commercial property operators.
- Cold chain & logistics: Temperature and humidity monitoring with excursion alerts, chain-of-custody records for compliance, and integration with fleet and warehouse systems.
- Agriculture: Soil, weather, and equipment sensors on LoRaWAN with irrigation automation and low-connectivity edge buffering.
- Connected consumer products: App-paired devices with BLE/Wi-Fi onboarding, OTA updates, and subscription features tied to cloud services.
- Healthcare & wellness devices: Sensor data collection with the encryption, audit trails, and data-residency controls that regulated environments demand.
What Comes Up Most Often on IoT Projects?
- How much does an IoT project cost?
- A proof of concept, one device type streaming data to a cloud dashboard, typically costs $25,000–$60,000 over 6–10 weeks. A production platform with device provisioning, OTA updates, alerting, and a customer-facing app usually runs $100,000–$300,000 over 5–9 months. At $35–75/hr for most delivery work, StepTo delivers this 40–60% below Western European or US engineering rates.
- Do you develop firmware as well as cloud software?
- Yes. Our engineers write embedded C/C++ firmware on FreeRTOS, Zephyr, and bare-metal targets (ESP32, STM32, Nordic nRF), including power management for battery devices, secure boot, and OTA update mechanisms. For hardware design and manufacturing we partner with your electronics team or a hardware house while owning everything from firmware upward.
- Which connectivity protocols do you work with?
- MQTT and MQTT over TLS for most device-to-cloud traffic, plus CoAP, HTTP, and WebSockets where appropriate. On the radio side: Wi-Fi, BLE, LoRaWAN for long-range low-power sensors, NB-IoT/LTE-M for cellular deployments, and Modbus/OPC UA/CAN for industrial equipment integration.
- How do you secure IoT devices and data?
- Per-device identity with X.509 certificates, mutual TLS, secure element or TPM usage where hardware allows, signed firmware with secure boot and rollback protection, least-privilege cloud policies per device group, and audit logging. We also design for the EU Cyber Resilience Act and IEC 62443 expectations that increasingly appear in industrial procurement.
- Can you take over an existing IoT platform built by another vendor?
- Yes. We start with a technical audit of firmware, cloud infrastructure, and the device fleet’s update path, stabilise the riskiest parts first (usually OTA and certificate expiry handling), then take over the roadmap with a dedicated team from $13,500/month or augment your team from $4,500/month per engineer.