There has been plenty of work in the field of IoT, even tho many people just associate WIFI with it, there are low power alternatives. Especially IETF has been working on this for a long time, to have a set of standards available. Many "solve" IoT by shrinking linux systems into 10 Euro boxes, which they consider small, but there are microcontrollers being able to join the internet, and IPv6 connectivity with end to end encryption is perfectly fine to do in 16 KByte of RAM and with 128 KByte of flash.
This talk revolves around microcontrollers who speak IEEE 802.15.4, most popular for being used in Zigbee, or ZLL(Lightbulbs). There is no need to not be able to join the internet, and have a restful Interface.

6LoWPAN enables communication and brings IPv6 down to small devices and takes PHY/MAC limitations into account. Be it BLE, Bluetooth, or IEEE 802.15.4.
CoAP - Constraint Application Protocol, just like HTTP a restful protocol
DTLS - Some Security as topping

All in all there is no need why a "light on" commando should be TCP, many layers of abstraction, when a 50 Byte packet does the job just fine. Standardized and open.

Let's get together and start tinkering in this field, which is intended to be open without any stakeholders to keep it closed like some patented IoT offerings.