What is Internet of Things| How IoT helps businesses|

Introduction:

Hi there! I am here again to give you very useful information which will make our life digital to the extreme level, The Internet of Things.

You probably know What is IoT and if no, I'll make you understand in this article.

First of All, I wanna make you curious to know about IoT and its scope in the future and what revolutionary change is bringing in the next years. So, let's start with the introduction.

Also read: Three steps which brought the concept of IoT?

What is the Internet of Things(IoT)?

The Internet of Things or IoT is influencing our lifestyle from the way we react to the way we behave from air conditioners that you can control with your smartphone to smart cars providing the shortest route, or your smartwatch, which is tracking your daily activities.

Now, what do you understand by the term internet? So the Internet is basically a network that is

formed by connecting computers globally. The Internet provides data highways to share information

over the next network from one place to another in the entire world. 

 

Well, here, the internet has been around for a while. But it's been mostly the product of people. So all the data and images and recordings and games, books and commerce, and all of that was created by people, for people, and about people. 

 

See, the internet is one of the most important and transformative technologies ever invented. I happen to know a few people who couldn't live without it. The Internet is like a digital fabric that's woven into the lives of all of us, in one way or another. 

 Must read: How to make a career in IoT?

The Internet of people changed the world. Well, there's a new internet emerging, and it's poised to change the world again, you see this new Internet is not just about connecting people. It's about connecting things. And so it's named the Internet of Things. 

 

Okay, so connecting things to the internet, a big deal, right? Well, it kind of is. And here's why. Because things can start to share their experiences with other things. Wooo, wait, what?

 How that works? Right! 

Well, it works like this, you take things and then you add the ability to sense and communicate, and touch and control. And there, you get an opportunity for things, to interact and collaborate with other things.

 

So think of it like this. We as human beings, we interact and contribute and collaborate with other people in our environment through our five senses, we are seeing and smelling and in touch and taste and hearing, right?

 

Well, imagine things with the ability to sense and to touch and then add the ability to communicate. And that's where the Internet of people and the Internet of Things intersect.
 

So what are some examples of these things?

Well, let's start here. How about your smartphone, You wouldn't believe it how many senses your smartphone has. 

• It knows where you are, knows if you're moving, 
• It knows how you're holding it. 
• It knows how many lights in the room.
• It knows how close it is to your face.
• It knows what you're saying to it. 
• And it even has an eye so it can see its surroundings. 
• Oh, and it also can communicate on a wireless network.

 

Let's take a look at one of the first IoT devices.Okay, all of us probably have one of these in our homes, maybe a version of one of these. It's a thermostat. But this thermostat does way more than just knowing the temperature in the room.

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 It knows whether I'm in the room or not. And it learns and tracks my home in a way patterns to ensure my comfort and save energy. And it communicates on a network. So I can control it from afar.

 

 

 

Let's discuss more,you must have heard of smart devices like smartwatches, smart cars, smart bulbs, etc.So with smart light bulbs, I can create all kinds of moods with brightness, light, dimming, and so on. But because they communicate on a network, they know how to listen. So I can tell them, or other things can tell them to turn on-off or blink. 

Now, there's a lot of things that were manufactured and built before the Internet of things. And the good news is we have tools and systems that allow you to add sensing and communications capabilities to existing things.  

 Imagine it!

Well, allow me to take you on a pictorial of My typical day or my typical morning, in the Internet of Things. There I am lying blissfully asleep. And you can see I have my armband on. 

 

And the beauty of that is it's sensing my sleep cycles, and it knows the most opportune moment to gracefully wake me up by gently vibrating and blinking light. Well, when that happens, my bracelet sends a message to other things in my home. 

And pretty soon a chain of events starts to occur, where my things are talking to other things. For example, my thermostat goes up to 80.

As my whole house fans start-up and draw all the cool morning air into my home, which pre-cools my home, allows me to not turn on my air conditioning for later in the afternoon, saves me a boatload of electricity. 

Must read: How to career in IoT? 

And my coffeemaker starts up and my bedside lamp fades to bright. So then I'm kind of curious, how did I sleep last night, so I roll over and grab my phone. And the good news is, I exceeded my goal.

As I like to get up in the morning and go for a walk.So while I'm walking, I get an email, and it says that my spa just turned on. 

 

So, I go over into my app after taking a bath for my spa and I ensure that the spa was turned back off. And then while I'm here I thought, you know, I wonder how much water went on my lawn this morning.

 
I see my sprinkler thing communicates with the local water districts thing that senses a bunch of parameters and tells my sprinkler system how much water to apply to my lawn.

Well, that's important today with our current drought conditions. So it's certainly conserving water, and I say, I save on my water bill as well. So I get back from my walk,  I eat my breakfast, and everything is good. They're kind of wrapping things up. 

Must read: Three steps which brought the concept of IoT

It's time to hug my friends. And I have hug sensors in my shirt that measures how many hugs like I'm kidding, I'm, that's not true. I don't have huge sensors on my shirt. But the Internet of Things does include smart textiles and clothing.

So we'll be looking out for that.  So I can go on and on about my day's events and tell you, how it correlates and interacts with the Internet of Things. But I think you get my point. 

So, from above discussion we get:

IoT is a giant network of connected devices. These devices gather and share data about how they're used, and the environment in which they're operated. It's all done using sensors. Sensors are embedded in every physical device.

Also read: How is the Internet of Things revolutionizing our life?

You wouldn't believe the domains like IoT, BigData will change our future completely and give today's technology a boom!

It can be your mobile phone, electrical appliances, vehicles, barcode sensors, traffic lights, and almost everything that you come across in day to day life.


These sensors continuously image data about the working state of the devices.


But the important question is,

 how do IoT devices share this huge amount of data?

 And how do we put this data to our benefit? 

IoT provides a common platform for all these devices to dump their data and in common language for all the devices to communicate with each other.

Data is emitted from various sensors and sent to IoT platforms, purely IoT platform integrates the collected data from various sources, further analytics is performed on the data and valuable information is extracted escrow requirements.

Finally, the result is shared with other devices for better user experience, automation and improving efficiency. Let us look at a scenario where IoT is doing wonders.

In an AC manufacturing industry, both the manufacturing machine and the belt has sensors attached.


They continuously send data regarding the machine health on the production specific to the manufacturer to identify issues beforehand.

A barcode is attached to each product before leaving the belt. It contains the product code, manufacturer details, special instructions, etc.

The manufacturer uses this data to identify where the product was distributed and tracks the retailers better. Hence, the manufacturer can make the product running out of stock available.

Next, these products are packed and parcel to different retailers. Each retailer has the barcode readers to track the products coming from different manufacturers, manage inventory, check special instructions and many more.

The compressor of air conditioner has an embedded sensor that emits data regarding its health and temperature. This data is not analyzed continuously, allowing the customer care to contact you for the repair work in time.



This is just one of the million scenarios. We have smart appliances, smart cars, smart homes, smart cities, where IoT is redefining our lifestyle and transforming the way we interact with technologies.

Who cares about IoT? Why should you also care about IoT?

So who cares? That's probably what you're asking yourself right now, who cares about all this? Well, let's start here. Big Business care. And they care to the tens of billions of dollars, they're making huge investments. You could say they're betting the farm on the Internet of Things.

 

And IBM has been in this space for a long time, although under the banner of Smarter Planet. But there's a couple of recent developments that I think are worth noting. First is Samsung, they make the handsets, among other things.

 

 

And they just purchased a company called smart things for $200 million. This company didn't even exist two and a half years ago. And in other news, Google purchased a company called nest and one of the largest acquisitions in the Internet of Things space for $3.2 billion. 

 

 

This is a company that makes thermostats and smoke detectors. So obviously these companies think there's something big on the horizon and they're willing to put a lot of money on the line. 

 

Of course this week we also heard from Apple, they just announced two new phones and they also announced a watch. And they also have a couple of software development kits. So, a health kit and home kit. So I expect a bunch of apps and products that will target home and wellness.

Also read: How  IoT is revolutionizing the supply chain?

How big is the Internet of Things? 

 

Well, it's been said that the Internet of Things was born at the point in time where there were more things on the internet than people, and that occurred around 2008. Today, there are over 10 billion devices.

 

Things on the internet are about 1.5 for every person on the planet that's expected to balloon to 50 billion by 2020. And that's going to course usher in dramatic billions of dollars of economic growth and utilities and automotive and electronics and healthcare.


I get it. Big Business, tech giants, people like me, we care, right? We're in it. We're thrilled by this, this is the next big thing.

But why should you care? 

Well, we all want to live better lives. And the technologies that are inherent in the Internet of Things like the ability to sense, communicate, acquire data, and so on, will help us build processes in systems that will deliver better health care through remote diagnostics and monitoring. 

 

 

And bringing a safer environment with like, early warning systems for a tsunami or earthquake and texts already has a proven track record of providing new levels of comfort for us, and certainly convenience in automating everyday tasks.

 

 

But wisdom, what's that about? So let's reference the knowledge pyramid. We all know that wisdom comes from sensing the world around us and collecting all that raw data and seeing how it comes together with patterns and trends. 

 

And that turns into knowledge. And of course, what we derive from knowledge is wisdom. So yes, I believe that the Internet of Things, well, is the perfect thing to collect a lot of this data, turn it into wisdom, and move the human race forward.

Here's an example of knowledge today, or Data to Knowledge, Google flu, be heard of this. This is cool. So what Google has done is they started tracking the location and frequency of search terms related to the flu, flu symptoms, flu, diseases, flu treatments.

 

And what they found is that there was a pattern that existed between the search terms and where flu activity was original. So they built this website. And it's used by hospital personnel, urgent care centers, and medical professionals of all kinds to understand what's occurring. 

 

Because we all know that the early detection of a disease can reduce the effect on a lot of us. So, it's certainly another case where the Internet of Things can be the way to aggregate the state data and help us all. Okay, so the Internet of things is a kind of big mine. 

 

For people who are interested in it, it looks like there might be some real-world use cases, maybe even some great potential.

Are there Challenges in implementation of IoT?

But are there challenges? Are there pitfalls? Are there blind spots? We don't even see yet? The answer is yes to all three. First, it's human nature to resist change.
 

 

We've seen it time and again, throughout history, you've got electricity and automobiles and airplane travel or the telephone. And, oh, it took years from the point of the invention to the point of widespread adoption. But it's all part of our lives today. 

 

So I posit that one of the challenges of the Internet of Things is to overcome this notion or belief that you know what, everything's just fine the way it is. Maybe so. But then there's another component, a technical side to this. And it's that the Internet of Things is way too complex. I'd love to say that I'm a user of the Internet of Things.
 

 

 Must-Must read: How to make Career in IoT?

 

Most people are not going to do that. It was in 1991, that Mark wise Right wrote an article for the Scientific American that said "the most profound technologies are those that disappear". They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it. I 100% agree, tech is most useful when it disappears, then no conversation about the Internet of Things is complete without discussing security and privacy. Privacy is paramount. 

 

 But, what about privacy and security?

Hey, I don't mind if my thermostat knows if I'm in the home or not. But it shouldn't not share that data with anybody else. And data in the aggregate, as we saw with the Google flu example. That's probably okay. As long as no personally identifiable information is shared as well. 

 

 

So security is also very, very important. In other words, I think a lot of us in here, and certainly, I am very comfortable with doing banking online, because I know that my banks have implemented security policies and technologies that ensure that I have a very secure connection with them.

Can you say the same about my armband? Or my garage door opener? I don't know. Maybe not yet. It's something I think we all need to work on. But what if there were some significant boosts to our quality of life? Would that be enough to prompt us to move ahead with the Internet of Things?

 

 

 

Let's go back to my morning, and there I am again, lying blissfully asleep. or so it seems. Turns out the sensors in my arm have been sent something's very wrong, my heart rate is going up my breathing is become erratic. 

 

 

 

And instead of this time gently waking me, it vibrates aggressively to get my attention. And as I roll over, I'm grabbing my chest and I'm like what's going on. So I reach over to my phone and I pull it up. And sure enough, there's a message, it says, I'm having high blood pressure and my breathing is erratic, and it suggests that I take two aspirin right away, and then goes on to say, it says, All my vital signs have been recorded in electronically transmitted to my medical provider. 

 

 

 

So at the back of the hospital, the doctors already evaluating my data. And in his professional opinion, I need to get into the hospital right away. So we electronically dispatch EMT directly to my home, including pertinent data about my current medical situation, so they know how to take care of me. And I even get a notice or a message from the EMT that they're about to arrive. 

 

 

I mean, we're spin to the hospital, and I'm put under care and observation. The good news is, Later that morning, the doctor comes and says, you're gonna be fine. You were suffering a heart attack. And we 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? Maybe all because things can talk to other things, or what we call the Internet of Things. 

Thanks!

  

Credit: EDUREKA

Link:   What is Internet of Things?

 

Good news!

There's good news for you all. I will make a comprehensive series for IoT, which would give you everything about IoT.

The knowledge in this series of IoT will help you understand how the IoT technology is going to change

the future. You wouldn't believe the domains like IoT, BigData will change our future completely and

give today's technology a boom!

Must read: What is 5G technology?
Business Insider intelligence estimates that 24 billion IoT devices will be installed by 2020 and IDC predicts that IoT revenue will reach around 357 billion in 2020, resulting in a lot of job opportunities in the IT industry.

 

 

That's it for today's discussion. Stay tuned! If you liked it please share it with your friends.

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