Exploring Edge Computing for Low-Latency IoT Applications

Hi everyone,

I’m working on a hobby project involving a fleet of environmental sensors (temperature, humidity, air quality) deployed in remote locations. I’m exploring whether to process data centrally (in the cloud) or push some logic closer to the sensors. That brings me to edge computing running compute tasks directly on local gateways or micro controllers so decisions can be made quickly without round trips to the server.

A few questions I’d love community insight on:

1. For small scale (say 10–50 nodes), is edge computing overkill, or is the latency benefit worth it?
2. What frameworks or lightweight platforms do folks recommend for edge logic (e.g. routing, filtering, anomaly detection) on constrained hardware?
3. How do you balance consistency and synchronization between the edge nodes and the central backend in real world systems?

I’d also appreciate any real examples of people who started from a cloud only setup and gradually adopted edge layers. Thanks in advance!