Enabling Unified and Scalable IoT Ecosystems: A Customisable Data Framework for Interoperability Across Heterogeneous Devices

Managing the growing diversity of IoT devices and data formats presents significant challenges for integration and consistency within interconnected ecosystems. To address these, we propose a customizable JSON framework for unified data representation, enabling seamless communication between heterogeneous devices and IoT platforms. The framework defines a flexible JSON grammar that encapsulates device-specific attributes and metadata, ensuring interoperability and consistency. Devices communicate either directly or via gateways, with the structured data transmitted to a modular Data Collection Platform (DCP). The DCP validates and organizes the data for database integration, supporting dynamic adaptability to new device types and sensor inputs with minimal reconfiguration. Our experiments across domains such as environmental monitoring, industrial automation, automotive telematics, and smart home systems highlight the framework's ability to simplify data representation while maintaining consistency across platforms. By standardizing data formats, the framework enhances ease-of-use for analytics tools, enabling seamless interpretation and application of insights across diverse use cases. This paper presents a detailed implementation of the JSON framework and its architecture, emphasizing its ability to address device heterogeneity, ensure interoperability, and provide a consistent foundation for scalable IoT ecosystems.