the Internet of Things

[russ74]

So I am hearing loads about this being the next big thing. Everything being connected to everything and the market forecast to triple and triple again and again. What are the opportunities out there if you wanted to explore that market space?

 

[SwindonSteve]

Build me a fridge that senses when I'm about to run out of milk/butter/cheese/beer etc and automatically orders it to be delivered to my house and I will buy one!

 

[Nuno]

I read of someone who programmed a Raspberry Pi into some pressure sensitive plates and alerted him when things ran out.
You have to be a bit obsessive with the milk going on the milk pad, beer on the beer pad etc, but it is possible. Getting it to order from a supermarket's delivery service wouldn't be so hard, but when it goes wrong and order 2,000,000 cans of beer you'd have to book a week or two off work.

 

[LowPrices.uk]

There's a good Twitter ac for this called iotattack.

Rgds

 

[Dan Izzard]

The Internet of Things seems such a far away concept for most businesses (IMO) - but really I think it's just about technology filtering down till it becomes cheap enough to integrate into everyday items. First you start with the luxury brands (L.G with a wi-fi connected washing machine) and then suddenly it's a feature replicated across most other brands (or will be).

How as a business could you look to take advantage of this new level of connectivity though? Through more avenues to ecommerce conversions?

Will people be buying your product or services by Smartwatch in the next 5 years?

Will you be sending push notifications straight to someones Fridge?!

Will my dream of a thermal imaging camera in my oven synced with a smartphone so I can monitor my pizza ever become a reality?

 

[AllUpHere]

I think since it's been known as 'the internet of things' people have got a little over excited. Farm machinery has used GPS and onboard systems to track yield of crops for years. This info is then used to calculate more effective distribution of fertiliser etc. It's a very similar principle (having the farm machinery effectively 'talking to each other').

 

[fisicx]

So I am hearing loads about this being the next big thing next big thing.

Things will become connected naturally as they have always done. There is nothing new about this, industry has been remote monitoring for years, all that has happened is the technology has become smaller, cheaper and more avaialble. Nothing to see here, move along...

 

[Dan Izzard]

Someone is trying their best to jump on the hype! Dixons Carphone ties with Three owner to debut ‘Internet of Things’ mobile service

 

[cjd]

It's going to be a hacker's wet dream.

The attack is being described as the first home appliance ‘botnet’ – an hack which involves computers that appear to be functioning normally but are secretly controlled by cyber criminals.

In this case, hackers broke into more than 100,000 everyday consumer gadgets that were connected to the internet, such as home-networking routers, connected multimedia centres, televisions, and at least one refrigerator.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencet...malicious-emails-worlds-household-attack.html

 

[Cromulent]

If you are really interested in the internet of things learn how to program embedded processors. Even the Raspberry Pi is too big for the internet of things.

I'm talking about small 8 bit CPUs such as the AVR or PIC CPUs. These are normally programmed in either assembly or C. So you better be good with your low level programming skills.

Most programmers seem to think that "old" programming languages like C are a thing of the past. This is so far from the truth it is unreal. The number of PHP programmers out there who think that they are good developers because they can hack on Wordpress is rather amusing. But I digress. No programming language other than C or assembly can really be used on these small 8 bit CPUs. They simply don't have the performance or the RAM available (some have 2 kilobytes or less of RAM) so even C++ is not really an option (well you can use an extremely cut down version but it is basically just C at that point so you might as well just stick with C).

The internet of things is all about miniaturisation and that means using extremely low powered devices to communicate with other extremely low powered devices.

 

[OldWelshGuy]

I wrote an app that you scan items when you open them, then if you can't remember whether or not they are in date (when you opened them) you re-scan it and it tells you when it was opened in days and hours

 

[garyk]

Most programmers seem to think that "old" programming languages like C are a thing of the past. This is so far from the truth it is unreal.

Agreed. In fact a friend of mine runs a recruitment consultancy and is often asked to place COBOL (with CICS) developers. There is a *ton* of COBOL code still being run on mainframes even today.

I did low level stuff back in the day (6502 and 6800 assembler) but not sure I would want to now. I take your point about things like RPi being too big but I think higher powered devices will get smaller and perhaps negate the need for C/embedded. Look at Edison, its a mini PC on an SD card.

 

[russ74]

Some really interesting stuff thanks. If its true that the tiny processing powers required for this are due to simple stuff doing simple stuff, (forgive me for being simple), then how far does this reach? Is my cup of coffee going to alert me to how strong it is before, during and after I drink it then?

 

[Annoying Donkey]

...is often asked to place COBOL (with CICS) developers.

Ahh Good ol CICS. An acronym I know well. Many happy hours hacking CICS on my personal computer... Until those annoying people, occasionally called managers (but more usually called something not family friendly ), wanted the machine to do something called work... ha ha.
In those days, real men used assembler, wimps used COBOL and personal computers had names like IBM/360 or IBM/370, and filled a specially prepared room with air conditioning and backup power supplies...
Boy, I am showing my age...

 

[namesweb]

I think it's going to only get bigger, yeah it has already been done, but the internet as a whole is still at the beginning of what's possible. I honestly believe in 20 yrs time there will be so much more than we have today (or perhaps even need).

I remember watching this show on BBC (Techwise?) about IoTs and they mentioned how integrating emergency services would get bigger. From there it makes sense that a natural progression might be the ability to auto book taxis or airport transfers based on proximity to a certain preset location for perfectly synced arrival, or getting the kettle to boil some water for a brew when I walk through the door.

On a slightly alternative note, I'd like to see a device that monitors my toast under the grill and alerts me when it's about to burn. I waste a lot of bread this way unfortunately!

Only problem is that this sort of thing makes constant monitoring or abuse of the data a realistic possibility..

 

[fisicx]

It's still nothing new. The IoT has been developing since the internet became a thing. The very first IoT can be traced back to 1991: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_Room_coffee_pot

The birth of the SIM card gave us wireless connections but that just made remote monitoring easier, the IoT was already happening but the people doing it didn't need an acronym to tel lthem this.

 

[garyk]

Yep in fact Java was primarily developed to run on lower power 'dumb' devices like toasters and set top boxes, never quite turned out that way though!