IOT applications
Anyone would love to live in a smart city or smart home where appliances and gadgets automatically attend to your needs.
Just imagine a home where the alarm sounds at 4:00 am to wake you up and automatically the coffee pot starts brewing coffee for breakfast. Then the bathroom lights goes on and the hot shower switches on and adjusts itself to the right temperatures as you walk through the door. Better still as you get dressed, your phone plays the notifications and program of the day for you. Then, as you set down to take the cup of coffee, the TV automatically switches on and scrolls down to your favorite channel for the morning.
This is the beauty of Internet of Things devices. Better still, the scale of its application can be in a city or even country.
Let us look into a number of sectors where IoT has had a great impact:
Infrastructure
Cities across the world have many structures; some are new while others are old, and they have to be monitored to ensure that they remain viable so as to avoid disasters.
Through a Modern Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) system like the one pioneered by CitiOS, IoT ensures that the information and condition of structures are gathered by the help of sensors rather than depending on humans to carry out the SHM.
The IoT SHM reduces cost and improves efficiency.
IoT is also used in power grid infrastructures to monitor and transmit power in various parts of the world.
Street lighting
Street lights are very crucial for modern-day cities. More so, due to the ever-expanding cities, IoT offers a perfect way of controlling the lights. By using light sensors, the IoT system can switch the street lights on and off without the help of a human.
Security
This ranges from the security of your home to the security of a country. Through the use of IoT, you can easily set up a number of security parameters around your home; you could have CCTV cameras connected to an alarm and your gate or door.
Similarly, the advanced military apparatus being developed communicate through IoT networks. For example, by using Radar technology, a missile defense system receives a signal of an incoming missile or attack jet and signals the missile batteries to fire missiles towards the threat.
Health care
This is one of the areas where IoT has had a great impact. Patients can now be diagnosed easily and even monitored by using a wide variety of sensors which are connected to various medical equipment for analysis.
For instance, if a patient is taken into intensive care unit, he/she is left at the care of machine; they are the one that monitors the blood pressure, temperature, blood sugar level, heart bit among other things.
Transportation and Logistics
Through IoT connectivity, drivers can easily get information on traffic jams or accidents along the highways to enable them to make advised decisions on which route o take.
Also, though the use of sensors, logistic companies can easily track cargo on transit or even track vehicles location for security purposes.
Agriculture
Agriculture is another sector that as greatly benefited from the use of IoT technology.
Today, a farmer can monitor his/her farm from his house by placing sensors around the farm to monitor the condition of the farm.
For example, the farmer could have humidity sensors in his soil which detect the level of humidity in the soil. If the humidity level falls below a certain level, the sensors through the IoT gateway sends a certain signal to the irrigation system to start sprinkling water on the soil for a certain duration of time.
