This article discusses the design and implementation of a scalable system architecture that integrates wireless sensor networks (WSNs) into the Internet of Things (IoT) and exploits cloud services to autonomously configure wireless sensor nodes to measure and transmit sensed data only at periods when the environment changes more often. The implementation relies on software-defined networking (SDN) features to simplify WSN management and exploits the power of existing cloud computing platforms to execute a reinforcement learning algorithm that makes decisions based on the environment's evolution.