As we all know the internet has been around for a while. We have been communicating, sharing information, doing bank transactions, uploading pics and video to social media sites etc. And if you notice it has been all about just people. People talked to each other, people shared things using the medium Internet. As a matter of fact, there are many people who can’t live without the internet. It has become our part of life in a way or another and it changed the world.
Internet of things(IoT)
IoT is the new age internet and it is not just about connecting the people in the world but connecting the people and the things in the world. That’s how the name “Internet of Things”. Connecting things to the internet?? How does that work?? It works if the things can sense and communicate.
A normal human being has five senses to smell, touch, communicate etc. If we make things around as to sense and communicate, we can bring the people and things together on the internet.
The best example to start with is your smartphone. There are many sensors attached to your smartphone. It can sense when you take the phone near your ear so that the display lights go off. It can transmit the voice signals. It understands how you are holding it and based on that the display gets orientated.
Another example is a smart watch or a device which tracks information about your daily activities like your heart rate, how many calories you have burnt etc.
But how does this affect our lives? Let walk through a day of a man, let’s call him Joe in the world of things connected to the internet.
- Joe sleeps with his smart bracelt which calculates the sleeping activity and decides on the time for a Joes healthy sleep.
- Once the healthy sleep threshold reaches, it wakes up Joe with a gentle vibration alert.
- Once it senses that Joe is awake, it sends signals to the thermostat to adjust the living room temperatures and starts the coffee machine.
- Joes drinks his coffee and palns to go for a walk with his dog. When he goes out he can make sure that door is locked properly from his smart watch or his phone.
- Now the thermostat feels no movement in the house and it sends signals to open the windows to bring fresh cold air to save electricity.
Another scenario,
- Joe sleeps with his bracelet and the bracelet finds out a weird pulse pattern. So, it alerts Joe to wake up and check the status.
- Joe finds out that he is about to get a heart attack. But the good thing is the bracelet has already sent a request for an ambulance and updated his latest health records to the hospital patient record systems and now the doctors are analysing it so that Joe can get the right treatment at the right time.
There are a lot of use cases for the internet of things and lot of companies are pouring money into the IoT research and development. In the coming years, we see lots of advancement in this space.
