Abstract: A sensor system includes a sensing device that has a hardware application program interface (API) that is manipulated by a cloud service to measure certain parameters using a variety of attached sensors. The hardware API creates a communication interface between the sensing device and the cloud service that permits the cloud service to manipulate how the device's hardware components acquire raw data from one or more attached wired or wireless sensors. In certain embodiments data acquisition with the sensing device may be entirely cloud initiated permitting sensing device to be controlled to collect data using any type of sensor without the sensing device requiring any sensor-specific hardware or locally-stored programming specific to a particular type of sensor coupled to the device.