What’s IoT anyway?
What’s IoT anyway?
One might think given it’s the 21st century, and given the great advances in technology that have been shared in social networks people is updated with all what’s happening, and the same as you no longer hear questions like: what’s a mobile phone? Or what’s a computer? You don’t expect to hear much: what’s IoT? The truth, there is more misunderstanding or ignorance than clarity in the subject.
For some years I’ve been working in IoT projects, I have been researching on the IoT fields and noticed I even started without knowing about the concrete definition of it, or even the aspects IoT projects cover.
For me it was just devices connected to the internet, and you might say in a simplistic low level point of view, that is IoT, and it is, however someone asked me if a mobile phone (smartphone) is an IoT product, now, is it? Before answering that question I surfed the internet for some reference and found a very interesting fact: There isn’t a global definition for what the Internet if Things is, whaaat?
Yes, there isn’t. Some definitions include that IoT is:
- A computing concept
- A system
- A network
- A network infrastructure
- A paradigm
- And so on…
Incredible huh? That even when IoT projects have been worked for several years now, and even when the amount of IoT products are increasing more and more every day, a single accepted definition has not arise. It actually kind of make sense though. Given each product, project, community and even development layer has its own vision of what IoT is and what it involves, it is hard for them to accept a definition that does not cover their point of view.
My thought on this is that it will happen when global standardization of architectures, models and concepts appear, leading for Global accepted frameworks with common features.
Among all the definitions you can find on the web, I would like to share the following two:
The Internet of Things (IoT) is a system of interrelated computing devices, mechanical and digital machines, objects, animals or people that are provided with unique identifiers and the ability to transfer data over a network without requiring human-to-human or human-to-computer interaction.
internetofthingsagenda.techtarget.com
A network of items — each embedded with sensors — which are connected to the Internet.
IEEE — 2014
So according to the IoT Agenda community it is a system of interrelated computing devices, so it is a network of items, which cover all of the described as machines, objects, animals or people. Weather they have sensors or not is really important since that’s how physical information is fetched to be shared to the internet. And now the key factor which is: they can transfer data over the network without requiring human to human or human to computer interaction.
Can now we answer if a smartphone is an IoT device? Well, only if we are sure it only shares data without our interaction with it, now, does it?
Many people would say the Phone is in standby mode when I don’t use and do not send data if I don’t make it to. The truth is, an smartphone has much more capabilities than just “sharing cute kitten videos” or using the social networks. Smartphones are built with several sensors of which probably most people don’t know about and from which we can turn our smartphone into an smart-IoT-phone, but that’s a topic for a different article.
Summary
So summarizing the previous definitions, IoT can be considered as a network of interconnected items which originally were not meant to send data through the internet without any human or computer interaction. A door, a locker, a chair, a light bulb are common devices, but as soon as the door can alert when it’s opened, a locker can notify when something has been taken from it, when a chair can share info on how much time has been people seated throughout a day, they become connected devices, they become IoT devices.
After thinking about it a bit and trying to fit my own experience I can say:
To me, IoT is a paradigm of networked technology development centered in the capability of physical and virtual objects to communicate. And so, IoT products, architectures, protocols, platforms and all layers must cover the ability of objects to communicate between them and to the world.
Félix Banguera, 2018.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading and give some feedback to, I’ll appreciate both.
PD: I’m sharing an IEEE article on a study made of this subject on 2015 which is one of the bases for this reading, I hope you find it as interesting as I did:
