What Is IoT?
If you look around, you’ll find at least one thing that has the ability to connect to the internet. It may be your phone. It may be a laptop, your TV, or even your fridge. Internet of Things generally refers to the collection of all those devices. But now just, you can argue that anything that has the ability to connect to the internet and collect and share data is a part of Internet of Things or IoT in short.
Why Do We Need IoT?
So the question here usually is what is IoT? Why do we need it? How does it help us? How does it work in many, many more questions?
So just as we discussed, IoT refers to the collection of all those devices that have the ability to connect to the internet and collect and share data. Hence the name Internet of Things. So basically we have a device that collects data from its surroundings, using sensors and actuators, and sends this collected data to the internet where the processing of that data can happen. There are many devices that can be included in this classification. An example can be phones, laptops, watches, TVs, refrigerators, washing machines, cars, and even homes. Yes. Whole homes themselves can be a part of IoT too. You can easily see the trend over here. Most IoT devices have the word “smart” at the start of their names: smart phones, smart watches, smart TVs, smart refrigerators, and smart homes.
Now that we have a clear idea of what IoT is, we can move to the next question. Why do we need IoT? Or how does it help us in short? It helps make our lives easier and more comfortable. If we take an example, we had listed earlier, like smartphones, smartphones have more use cases than I can, you know, list here without going on for hours and hours. It can call, it allows us to watch movies, it allows us to connect to the internet, interact with strangers on varied forums, shop for things we need, general entertainment. You get the idea. But let’s take a better example for our understanding: a smart house.
Smart House
A smart house has many different features that we can talk about. One of the features is automatic lights, where the lights automatically detect your presence in the room and get switched on, or they can be voice activated. You can say “activate” and they’ll get switched on. And it also has its name next-gen security to keep your house safe, but it allows only authorized people to enter your home and locks up everything when you leave. Then it has entertainment management via devices such as Google Home, Alexa, Echo to keep track of your chores, to play movies and songs, etc. It also keeps track of temperature management, the house automatically adjusts to the most suitable temperature based on the surrounding climate. So you can see how it brings luxury into our lives and makes it more comfortable for us to live.
IoT Benefits to Society
Now, this is at an individual level. At a larger scale, it benefits society as a whole too. In industries such as healthcare, it has many use cases. Doctor-patient interaction, for example, allows for remote interaction between patients and doctors. So if a patient has any sort of a deadly disease, the doctor doesn’t necessarily have to come in close contact to help the patient out. Another example here is that data analysis is improved greatly. Now doctors make amazing decisions and based on the time and the data they’ve been given, but computers can sometimes make better decisions. And combining doctors and computers can give us the best diagnosis possible. It helps us out a lot in the healthcare industry.
IoT In Other Industries
Farming
Farming has been one of the industries that has stayed with us since the beginning of human civilization itself. And right now is the correct time to improve upon our traditional methods and shift into modern farming to provide food for our evergreen population. Smart technologies have definitely helped us increase productivity through new devices like smart tractors and analysis devices. That will help us get a better data analysis of soil, then comes the manufacturing industry.
Manufacturing
Now this industry has already taken IoT with open arms. It already has automation replacing many menial jobs. It not only increases the interactivity but also boosts the efficiency and production as well. In this industry then comes the education industry. Now better methods to teach children are already being implemented out there that are in conjunction with IoT. A good example is augmented reality being used in some classes to give students a better experience of real-life animals and even extinct animals. Hence, having IoT will not only be beneficial to us individually but also be beneficial to us as a society.
How Does IoT Work?
Let’s discuss the IoT architecture. There are basically four layers to it.
Sensing/Device Layer
The first layer is sensing/device layer, which is basically the thing part of IoT. This thing is basically the device. It has sensors and actuators that collect the data from surroundings based on a specific function. Example, pressure sensors, atmospheric pressure sensors, and light sensors. They basically collect all the data and they give it to the embedded device.
Connectivity Layer
Now after the data has been collected through the sensing device layer, it goes to the connectivity layer, where it is sent to the cloud using the internet. This connection is generally made through one of the methods like via Bluetooth, cellular, RFID, or NFC.
Data Processing Layer
After that comes the data processing layer. Now the data, once it reaches the cloud, is subject to the real meat of the whole process, that is the analysis part of the data. The different types of algorithms are used based on the type of data collected and other assumptions to get meaningful insights and patterns. Then a decision is made based on the insights gained.
User Interface/Application Layer
Once the hard part is over, the result of the decision is conveyed to the thing or the IoT device. And similarly, changes are made to the user interface and application. This is the last layer. This is a layer that most of us will actually see. It is a layer we use to interact with the device. It can be the touch screen or the buttons that are on the device. It’s basically the front end to all the backend processing, which included the previous levels.
Example: Smart Fridge
Now a good example to explain this process is a smart fridge. Sensors in the smart fridge collect data from the surrounding. They see what kind of temperature it is, let’s say it’s 34 degrees, and what kind of item is being stored inside the fridge. Once it collects all of this data, it sends it to a central cloud where the processing happens. Based on this collected data, the system decides the inside temperature of the fridge should be 20 degrees, and we can see the result of this on the interactive screen on the fridge. Now we had no involvement in this process, but we saw the result that we wanted. This is how IoT works in a nutshell.
Future of IoT
What kind of feature does IoT have? It would not be crazy to see that we may live in a future where everything we touch and everything we use is connected to the internet, buried with a central cloud where all of our data is being collected and being utilized to make life and society a much better place. You can assume almost everything is going to be automated and connected to the internet, everything: your table, your phones, which already are, your doors, your hangers, you know, examples. And you can see that all of them are going to be a part of IoT in the future. And there is definitely a lot of space for growth. So if you’re thinking of a career in this field, not at all a bad idea. It will be both satisfying and challenging. It will flow from everything we use and it will be used to make our lives easier. Every person, no matter what background or what profession they are from, will be affected by it in both good and bad ways. It will be, or rather it is, the advent.
