What is the Internet of Things? Why do we care?
The Internet of Things is one of the most fascinating technological advancement in today’s date. The internet has been around for a while, but it’s been mostly the product of PEOPLE. All the data, books, information, commerce, various platforms have been for people, by people, and about people. The internet is the most important and revolutionary technology ever invented. Globally, the rate of growth of internet users is 9.1% from 2018 to 2019, increasing the number to 4.3 Billion active internet users. The Internet has become an integral part of our lives. The internet of people changed the world. Now, there is a new internet emerging and it is assured to change the world again. This new internet is not just about connecting people, but it’s about connecting things, hence the name — INTERNET OF THINGS.
How does it work?
So, connecting things to the internet, big deal huh? Well, these things can share experiences and talk to other things. Wooaaah whaat?! How does that work, right? Well, it works like this — To these ‘things’, we add the ability to sense and communicate and touch and control. Thus we get the opportunity to get these ‘things’ to interact and collaborate with other ‘things’. Just as we humans use our sense organs to see, smell, feel, taste and hear, similarly various sensors provide such abilities to these ‘things’. That’s where the internet of PEOPLE intersect with the internet of THINGS.
So what are some examples of these things? Smart LED — An LED which is connected to your phone via a network and can be controlled remotely from anywhere across the world. Wireless Printers — which are connected to a network and can print from your phone, tablet or computer. Fitness bands — They track your daily exercise routine, sleep patterns and can then send this data to various ‘things’ like your phone which automatically sets off an alarm according to your sleep cycle, smart fans turn on and draw all the fresh air into the home, bedside lamp turns on. This is how various ‘things’ can interact with each other and a chain of events can follow one after the other.
What can we as developers do about it? There are a lot of things which were manufactured before the Internet of Things. Even today these smart devices haven’t reached a large amount of public. The cool thing is, we have tools and systems that allow us to add sensing and communications capability to these already existing ‘things’. Arduino board, NodeMcu are the most common tools used to add these sensing capabilities to the ‘things’.
It is predicted by statista.com, that by next year, 30.73 billion devices or ‘things’ will be connected to the internet. Huge investments are being made by the tech giants like Google, Amazon, Apple and many more in the field of IoT. Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. is the leader in all of IoT. Aside from being the search engine authority, Google has its home monitoring products in the form of Nest. Google Home is also very much popular these days. Right behind Google is Amazon, an undeniable IoT market leader offering quite a few home improvement and automation products. Amazon’s Echo speaker is actually what prompted Google to produce Home because the latter has cornered the market for “always listening” devices that are ready to answer your queries with the help of its Alexa home connectivity technology.
Is IoT worth it?
Taking reference from the knowledge pyramid, we know that wisdom comes from sensing the world around us, by gaining experiences, collecting all the raw data around us and forming patterns and trends about the same. This turns into knowledge, and what we derive from this knowledge is Wisdom.
So I believe that the Internet of Things is the perfect thing to collect a lot of data, convert it into wisdom and move the human race forward.
Let’s take an example — I am sleeping in my bed. Turns out, the sensors in my armband sense something really wrong. My heart rate is going up, my breathing has become erratic and instead of vibrating gently to wake me, it vibrates aggressively to get my attention, and as I roll over with a hand on my chest and wondering what’s going on, I reach over to my phone. There is a message by the armband that says that I have high blood pressure and my breathing’s erratic and it suggests that I take an Aspirin right away. It then says that all my vital signs have been recorded and electronically transmitted to my health care provider. Back at the hospital, the doctor is already having a look at my vitals. In his opinion, I need to get to the hospital right away. So he electronically delivers my home address to the Ambulance along with the instruction on immediate treatment to be given in the ambulance, and I’m updated on my phone that an Ambulance is on its way to pick me up. I’m hurried to the hospital and kept under keen observation. The good news is, later that morning doctor comes up and says ‘ You will be fine. It was a heart attack and we’ve avoided any major damage because you got the treatment you needed in just the nick of time’.
SO NOW, IS THE INTERNET OF THINGS WORTH IT? YOU TELL ME.