Internet of Things: Part II

Every Device

Connected to the Cloud

What kinds of information?

Of course this will depend on the actual device and the type of information it is processing, obviously textual information will flow between the devices and the resources they interact with in the cloud but it will not be limited to that. In addition to pure textual data there will also be images, video, audio and in some cases proprietary formats that are specific to the device and have special processing requirements. Below is a list of various kinds of information that is likely to be part of the IoT information flow:

Types of Data

• Location (coordinate), accelerometer (orientation), speed, direction,
• Measurements, readings, mechanical properties, physical properties,
• Video feeds, audio feeds, image captures,
• Statistics, volumes, capacities, delta's (changes),
• Operating and environmental conditions, 

• Biometric and various bio sensor data,
• Stock (inventory) information, item location, item condition (expiring, depleting, etc).



Again, this isn't an exhaustive list but a representative subset of the types of data that are likely to flow back and forth between the devices and the cloud based resources they leverage. Many devices will use multiple data types to accommodate required functionality, one can easily imagine a security camera not just communicating the video it is capturing but also sending back operating and environmental conditions. This is part of the amazing thing about miniaturization, devices can easily become multi-functional supplanting what used to be dedicated technologies with newer, more robust implementations. Consider that many cameras now come equipped with the ability to not just geo-tag a photo but also send it automatically to a resource waiting in the cloud with open arms. 



What are the implications?    



I'm not able to articulate all the possible implications and ramifications of this new wave of connectedness but some things fall out as fairly obvious so I'll make an attempt at describing what they are. One fact that is easily overlooked is the number of devices that each one of us has or are associated with,  projections in the near term put this number at 1,000 to 5,000 devices per human. This equates to to somewhere between 50 and 100 trillion devices.

The Internet addressing scheme (IPV4) is substantially over extended with several hacks put in place over the years to extend its lifetime. The Internet of things requires an IPV6 infrastructure to manage and allocate address space for that many devices. The communication infrastructure is another consideration but I suspect that will grow to support this initiative as required so I'm not as concerned as many, maybe just due to ignorance. Storage and processing capacity might be another concern but like communications the cloud will scale to accommodate these new growth and capacity requirements.

The biggest implication for me are the massive opportunities that will be presented to software developers, designers, engineers and the rest of the technology resources required to support this migration. What this ultimately implies is that everything will have a hardware and software component as well as some type of coordinating resources defined in the cloud. Its easy to say that this initiative will produce more lines of production code in the world then ever before! Running inside of toothbrushes and televisions, refrigerators and cars, clothing and packaging, the opportunities will be endless.

Who's playing?

As scale and cost go down, almost everybody starts to play including companies with products that you might initially think wouldn't benefit from these technologies, but innovative ideas and product refactoring will create new paradigms that find ways to take advantage of this trend. We are still in the early adoption phase but many big companies are and have been pushing this idea for years.

IBM, of course. Motorola. Intel. Microsoft. Cisco. ATML, Others. These links will take you to a relevant page that discusses each company in the context of the Internet of Things.

Most of the electronics parts and component manufacturers are opening new markets that are created because of reduced cost and scale. This trend is only just starting so it will take some time before innovative thinking hits the electronics industry and they aggressively create new markets and applications for these products. In many cases these fundamental components will increase in distribution and usage by an exponential factor, for this reason the manufacturers are desperate to open these new markets and exploit the opportunities. Also, many of the controls companies like Johnson Controls are heavily involved in this movement to enable their products for cloud interaction.

Motorola and IBM have focused on RFID as a primary enabling technology, unfortunately RFID still has a high cost on the manufacturing side relegating it to specific situations instead of the ubiquity it originally promised. IBM also has sensor technology that is being used in horticultural applications but again the cost of manufacturing has been a problem for wide scale distribution. I'd like to say that the manufacturing costs will decrease in the near future and allow expanded use of RFID technologies but as history has shown us that's hard to predict. 

iCloud is an interesting company that is on the periphery of IoT but has a great concept that could easily evolve to accommodate a much deeper level of device interaction and control. Currently iCloud is focused on a subset of devices like photo frames, smart phones, streaming music players, set-top-boxes and media players but they are clearly in a position to expand this as new devices become available and ubiquitous. This may not be their ultimate intention, but they are positioned well to take advantage of this trend should they decide to. Freemium model.

Pachube, another IoT based site has taken an interesting approach to integrating themselves into the Internet of things by creating an aggregation portal of feeds from things all over the world. These feeds are accessible via the website or APIs that are exposed for developers to use. The feeds include various environmental inputs like weather conditions but also track things like the temperature of some one's pet salamander terrarium. Anyone can setup a feed to the site which will then be aggregated and made publicly available via the web interface and the APIs. It's free.

Another company in the mix is Violet, this is a company that produces several products that are targeted directly at this market and seem to have the most maturity of any offerings in this space. They have managed to implement part of an idea I've documented here that combines the intelligence of LED lighting with cloud based harvesting and alerting software, this is found in their NabazTag product. Several other products are offered that can be used in any number of ways for integrating objects and things into the cloud, these include Ztamps:s, Ear:z, Mir:or, and Nano:ztag. Not Free.

The last company I'll discuss here is TouchaTag, formally known as Tikitag. This company offers physical products that leverage RFID technology as the mechanism for deploying their business model. TouchaTag supplies an infrastructure and the physical components required to connect things to the cloud. In addition, they are building an ecosystem of software components and applications that can be utilized as part of an implementation. Not Free.

Involvement of the Citizen Scientist

The citizen scientist aspect for me is the best and most exciting part of this latest revolution in communications and connectivity. Consider that there are literally 10s of thousands of hackers moving both the technology and the application of it forward in increasingly innovative ways. Over the last two years I've spent a fair amount of time developing software for various micro-controllers, namely the Arduino and the Propellor. During this period I've seen incredible activity and growth in the ecosystems that support these types of embedded computer systems, not just in the technology but also the communities.

These types of devices are built specifically to handle embedded processing whether its inside a washing machine or controlling some aspect of a robotic vacuum cleaner. The evolution I've seen has been impressive and represents a clear channel where most of the innovation will come from. The hackers of today are a new breed of citizen scientist that are fueled not just by traditional motivations but also by the incredible technologies, communities and tools available.

There are literally dozens of online communities that are built to support the concept of hacking but there are two sites that stand out: Makezine and Instructables. Both represent fantastic communities that cover a wide range of topic areas, expose a considerable array of resources and provide an infrastructure that supports sharing information and knowledge in an organized and useful way. Another site, EvilMadScientist is equally good but is exclusively focused on electronics and circuit development so it doesn't have quite as broad an appeal as the others.

What resources are available?
This is the best part, tons! So much so that it is impossible to keep up with the innovations, technologies and communities that are evolving out of the either everyday. This section is an attempt to highlight some of the sites that are deeply ingrained in these initiatives or are suppliers of some of the fundamental technologies being used. Some of these sites have been mentioned already but all of these have some direct relationship to the Internet of Things:

Makezine, Instructables, Evil Mad Scientist , Arduino.cc, Parallax, Adafruit Industries, Digikey, Jameco. Each of these links will take you to the home page of the respective site.

All of these sites are excellent resources for starting the journey into the Internet of Things, each site provides a somewhat unique set of touch points for understanding what is happening and where things are going. For examples of ideas and actual implementations see Makezine and Instructables. If you are looking for the technical stuff then start with the Evil Mad Scientist, Arduino and Parallax sites. Adafruit is a little of everything and probably my favorite site of the bunch, she (ladyAda) is extremely knowledgeable and the site maintains a great set of product specific communities, sells various components and even has some very cool kits. Digikey and Jameco are suppliers, both of these sites carry literally millions of electronic components and represent two of the primary suppliers to the hacker community.

In Part III

In part three of this series I'll highlight some specific examples where innovation is happening in these areas and describe some of the implications and possibilities of it in terms of the consumer, the business, and the entrepreneur.