“Alexa, Turn On My Sink.”
The Internet of Things and the Future.
Would you spend $550 on an Amazon Alexa-enabled sink?
While my mother was shopping for a new kitchen sink last week, she came across sinks that have sensors to automatically stop when a pot has been filled, can “provide the proper timing for lathering, scrubbing, and rinsing your hands,” and can check the temperature of the water by voice activation from across the room. Wow. The kitchen appliance of our dreams.
This is just one application of the Internet of Things (IoT). According to Transforma, today in 2020, there are around 8 billion connected IoT devices worldwide. By 2030, there are projected to be 24 billion connected devices with a market value of $1.5 trillion.
What is IoT?
The Internet of Things encompasses all internet-enabled devices that can “talk” to each other over a network.
From fitness collars for dogs, noise-canceling forks, and Alexa-enabled salt shakers to heart monitor implants, quality control monitors, and agricultural tools, IoT spans applications inside and outside the body and the home.
How does IoT work?
An IoT system can be broken down into four parts.
1. Sensors/Devices
These are the actual hardware components to the IoT system that are deployed into the world.
Sensors collect data from the surrounding environment—which can be in the form of light, motion, sound, presence of certain chemicals, etc.
Actuators are the opposite of sensors. These receive signals and then act on the environment in some way—either by changing the temperature, intensity of light, turning something on/off, etc.
For example, in a home security application, the sensor would collect video footage of the hallway outside your door. If somebody breaks into your house, the actuator might turn on the alarms and call the authorities. Perhaps also turn off all the lights, make all the fans turn on, and play spooky sounds. Or maybe save that for Halloween…😈
2. Connectivity
The data collected by the sensors is sent to the cloud. This refers to the software and databases that run on servers that can be accessed over the Internet. These servers are located in data centers worldwide. Cloud computing allows users and businesses to not manage physical servers themselves or run software on their local device.
The cloud is like Facebook. Each sensor/device can log onto the platform to post or learn some new information or message their pals. 😁
But how does data get to the cloud in the first place? The sensor/devices need to be connected to the cloud through cellular, satellite, WiFi, Bluetooth, etc. Choosing which standard depends on the specific IoT application because there are various tradeoffs between power consumption, range, and bandwidth.
3. Data Processing
Once the data gets to the cloud, software processes it to make meaning out of it. This could be as simple as checking of the received temperature signal was within a certain range, or as complicated as using AI to identify cardiac arrests.
IoT platforms provide users with ready-to-use features that speed up development of applications for connected devices and manage cross-device compatability. They also provide data security like encryption, identity management, device authentication, etc.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS) IoT is a cloud computing platform designed to enable smart devices to easily communicate with the AWS cloud and other devices.
- Microsoft’s Azure IoT is a platform that allows businesses to interact with their IoT devices, perform various operations on the data, and visualize those operations.
So when your home security system sends video footage of an intruder, the software in the cloud uses computer vision to identify that there is indeed someone who is not supposed to be there. 😯
4. User Interface
The information detected by the sensors and the processing software may need to be relayed to the user in some way → by alerting them through email, text, notification, etc. or an interface that allows them to check in on the system.
If there’s an intruder, you probably want to know about it. If there’s no intruder, maybe you still want to take a look at your hallway to see if your neighbor is really watering your plants like they said they would. 🧐
And this isn’t always just one way. In some cases, the user can control the system remotely, like shifting the view of the security camera or changing the temperature of the thermostat.
IoT Today
IoT has been widely deployed today due to these advancements:
- Low cost, low power sensor technology
- Cloud computing platforms
- Development in machine learning and analytic software
- Improvement of conversational AI for home IoT devices
A major issue with certain IoT devices is latency. This refers to the time taken to send the package of data from the sensor picking up the data to the actuator making a decision. This means that the processing speed is partially dependent on the performance of the user’s device.
In self-driving cars for example, a few milliseconds of latency can mean life or death.
Edge Computing
A solution to this is edge computing. This cuts out the need to send every bit of data to the cloud by processing the data physically closer to the device: either at a gateway or on the device itself.
Gateways are the bridges between the sensors/devices and the cloud. They can communicate with IoT devices over varying protocols (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Zigbee, LPWAN) and then translate it into a standard protocol such as Message Queuing Telemetry Transport (MQTT) to the cloud.
This intermediary cloud allows for:
- Increased scalability: Resolves storage needs because not every piece of data needs to be sent to the cloud. Gateways can pre-process and filter data being generated to decrease transmission, processing, and storage requirements.
- Higher performance: IoT devices can interact and connect to each other at a faster pace due to the faster processing speed. Latency and costs are reduced.
- Saves battery life: Sending data over long ranges can be power-consuming. For certain applications such as smart agriculture, IoT devices need to last for many years. By installing a gateway on a grain silo, the sensors only need to send data short distances. It’s much easier to replace batteries of a gateway than all the soil sensors.
However, a major challenge with edge computing is security. Every IoT device is at risk of getting hacked, and because edge computing centers such as gateways collect data of multiple devices, they are highly susceptible to cyberattacks.
Future of IoT
Where is IoT in relation to other emerging technologies?
5G
As we begin rolling out the fifth-generation mobile network (5G), latency will decrease even further and data processing speeds will increase. This “connectivity fabric” will weave everything and everyone together more seamlessly than ever before. 5G connectivity will become integral with supporting the quickly growing IoT industry.
Self-Driving Cars
The autonomous vehicle revolution is near. Fortune predicts that by 2040, 95% of new vehicles sold will be autonomous. Driverless cars will need to utilize IoT technologies along with 5G to update their algorithms without latency in order to create a connected system on roads to deliver the safest experience possible.
Security
As the number of IoT devices grow dramatically, will security be able to keep up? Every aspect of the IoT system needs to be protected in order to maintain the security of the entire ecosystem. Ken Murno demonstrates this in more depth.
In October 2016, the Mirai Botnet targeted computers to search for vulnerable IoT devices on their networks, and then further infecting them with malware. This caused Twitter, Netflix, CNN, Reddit, and many other folds of the internet to crash.
Security should certainly be the #1 priority when implementing IoT systems, especially as they become more complex.
If someone were to hack into your home security camera, what if you were now labeled the intruder! 😳
🚨 TL;DR
- The IoT industry is projected to be worth $1.5 trillion by 2030.
- Four main parts to an IoT system: sensors/devices, connectivity, data processing, and user interface.
- Edge computing allows for higher performance in certain IoT applications.
- 5G will be a critical component to the future of IoT.
- Security should be the #1 priority when implementing IoT systems.
Now, if you’re going to buy a smart sink now (no judgement), just make sure it’s secure. If someone hacked your smart home through your sink…
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