Internet Of Things (IoT)

Internet of Things (IoT)

What is IoT?

In industry terms, many characterize the Internet of Things like the new Cloud Computing – the next big step to revolutionize our lives via streamlining production, data collection and analysis and a whole new range of capabilities for our appliances. A ‘Thing’ in IoT has two defining characteristics:

Connection to the network is usually achieved via 2G, 3G or a low-power wide-area network, LPWAN, LoRa being currently the most popular choice. All Things have a preassigned unique identifier the platform uses to tell them apart.

Examples of IoT include modern smart wearables, like watches, glasses, even smart textile, smart housing appliances like fridges, lights or stoves, industry systems that facilitate the manufacturing process, health-related such as activity trackers and autonomous self-healing systems, or even Sci-Fi sounding ones like the Connected Contact Lens. More recently, IoTs are being manufactured for COVID19 tracking and early hospitalization purposes.

What are the Characteristics of IoT?

Computer, but yet not a computer

While IoT Platforms can be differentiated by speciality, proprietary status, performance, and other various criteria, they all share the same architectural design comprised of a sensor, actuator, device, gateway, IoT Integration Middleware and an application. This is how it works:

The sensor captures information on the physical environment by responding to stimuli, while the actuator manipulates the physical environment according to commands received from its connected devices.
Devices own a processor and a storage mechanism and either integrate or connect to a sensor and an actuator.
A gateway provides a connection between the device and its counterparts.
IoT Integration Middleware is a layer that receives, processes and retransmits data between sensors, actuators, devices, and applications.
Finally, an application in an IoT system is a software component that either makes observations about or influences the physical world.

Beyond these, an IoT platform can be cloud-enabled, i.e. can communicate to a cloud environment, and this is a common case scenario when heavy calculations or algorithms should be applied on a data set generated by the IoT architecture.

What are the benefits of IoT?

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication, reducing maintenance cost and improving reliability
Streamlined production
Huge data sets
Innovation. It is still in its infancy and all predictions, telling us a rapid growth phase is ahead
New markets taking an interest
Reusable solutions. Many different IoT systems have big overlaps in architecture and patterns

Should you go for IoT?

Fundamentally, IoT is an array of simple devices, connected to more capable devices. A band-aid-like device that tracks heart rate is an example that depicts a good use-case scenario. Many manufacturers today have IoT integrated into their production line that keeps track of their process, alerts when something is about to go wrong and produces a vast quantity of information that can be analyzed in order to optimize that process.

Smartwatches are popular nowadays, yet the market for smartwatches isn’t nearly saturated. Or, let’s say you are a smartwatch manufacturer. Now, you use IoT enabled technology to produce IoT enabled technology. Between 2016 and 2019 the number of IoT enabled devices more the doubled, from 4.7 billion to 11.6, and every time we find an applicable use for these devices, two more seem to come up.

So, if you are the next generation manufacturer, visionary entrepreneur or you simply want to scale-up productivity, downsize scraps or improve quality, you should go for IoT.

Internet of Things @ Infogion

By all accounts, IoT is changing the world. If you want to be at the forefront of innovation, you need an appropriate team. InfoGion can put you in touch with the innovational minds that can make technology work for you in previously unimaginable ways.