Introducing the IoT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is all over the news and has been for some time what with its promise of a merging of the real and digital worlds controlled by smart devices and sensors, which can predict events and assist us in our busy lives. There is talk of major efficiencies in retail, industry, and healthcare that could save trillions of dollars. Furthermore, IoT will bring us smart cars, secure and efficient buildings and even smart cities that control traffic patterns and monitor available parking spaces making life more comfortable. For the individual, there is even smart homes and the Evangelista’s favorite, the smart refrigerator that orders your groceries and provides dietary and nutritional advice. This is all very good except that when you listen to the marketing pitch you can’t help having a sense of dejavue.

After all, do we not have most of these services or technologies available to us already

We already have environmental (temperature and lighting) control, robotics and automation in our factories to improve efficiency. We have smart supply chain in transportation and delivery logistics, and automated inventory control in retail. We even have, and have had for some time, remote stock management and maintenance of vending machines and unmanned booths. The technology exists whereby the remote machines communicate their stock and cash levels back to HQ, this is already standard operational practice. Additionally, complex and efficient traffic management systems are nothing new, neither is GPS and geo-location based information systems, which can aide us in navigating unfamiliar cities. Smart homes are certainly nothing new, as we have had the ability to automate the regulation of our living environment since the eighties using programmable digital timers, thermostats and light sensitive diodes. Furthermore, we
already have home security systems that use motion sensors, pressure pads, even web cams and microphones as their eyes and ears. All these systems can communicate using a range of existing communication channels such as fixed line, Wi-Fi radio, Bluetooth, GPRS and 3G or many other forms of data connectivity that best matches their requirements. In-fact we have had all these sensors, programmable logic and communication media available to us for decades.