Actuator
A component that turns an electrical command into a physical action, such as opening a valve, switching a relay or moving a motor.
If a sensor lets an IoT system observe, an actuator lets it act. Common examples are relays that switch loads on and off, solenoid valves, servo and stepper motors, heaters and dimmable lights. A microcontroller drives them through a GPIO pin, a PWM output or a dedicated driver chip that handles the higher currents involved.
Actuators raise the stakes of an IoT deployment. A wrong sensor reading produces a bad data point; a wrong actuation can flood a floor or stall a production line. That is why systems that act on the physical world usually add safeguards: local interlocks that work even when the network is down, confirmation messages back to the platform, and a defined safe state the device falls into after a watchdog timer reset or a lost connection.
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