What is the internet of things?

This might be a question that you have been asking lately as we all keep hearing more about smart things and connected devices. “Internet of Things” concepts were introduced to us over 10-15 years and have shifted from humble object tagging ideas to much more sophisticated concepts. We believe the Internet of Things is an ecosystem of devices and systems interacting with each other using the Internet on behalf of people. This interaction may produce automation systems, social entanglement with our objects, efficiency in systems, brand new product categories, and meaningful analytics.

Claudia Bracholdt of Quartz recently invited Robert Mawrey, CEO of ioBridge, to share our experience and view-point on the Internet of Things. In the following YouTube video, Robert discusses the Tweeting Toaster (@mytoaster) and demonstrates a smart plug that is able to be controlled by a smart phone and social interaction. The smart plug is powered by the ioBridge Iota Wi-Fi Module making anything smart and cloud-connected. Manufacturers use the Iota module or a reference design in many products when they are looking to build scalable, stable, and secure connected products and services.

Using the ioBridge platform, known as RealTime.io (real-time input and output), users are able to build all kinds of interactions among things, people, and apps. RealTime.io provides social context such as Twitter, Facebook, and Foursquare and system context with Email, back-end systems, weather systems, analytic processing, and voice services such as Twilio. Robert mentioned a “tweeting toaster” which tweets when it is in use. This was created over 5 years ago and has stirred up many conversations about connected objects. The idea is not to stop at this humorous example. We ask ourselves, “What does this mean?” and “What else can we do?” Knowing if a toaster is in use can tell us the power consumption of the appliance. What if this was not a toaster but a washer and dryer? You could get notified at laundry mat that your laundry is ready. Instead of a public output to Twitter, how about to sending notifications to phones. This could have been a medical device that is out of spec and alerts you that you need calibration or service and possibly do that calibration remotely.

What else could you do? How about building a smart city. This is exactly what Geosyntec did with the ioBridge platform and devices. Instead of reacting to Twitter, water systems in cities react to weather conditions read in from weather websites, remote locations, local sensors, and now have the ability to make real-time control decisions in determining how water is collected, routed, and used efficiently.

Again, the idea is to keep pushing the ideas further. With ioBridge, we make it possible to create all kinds of newly imagined ideas. Let’s keep the conversation going… Please contact us and see how we can work together and build amazing new things.

[via Quartz]