Although we may think that it is somewhat exaggerated, the truth is that this name is entirely literal. IoT is the concept of connecting anything to the Internet. And again, we talk about anything, from the most everyday objects that we can find in our home, our car, elements of a hospital, a hotel, and of course, objects of the industry. We will answer how IoT devices are connected?
There are already many objects on the market with this option, and all studies indicate that the trend is that the number and type of these will continue to grow. Let’s analyze how we got to this point. Before the Internet came, networks were intended to talk to people; we had landlines / mobile phones and sending SMS.
We can say that the first version of the Internet is focused on the ‘Content.’ It was used as a showcase where companies and individuals could host personal information or their products and make it available to consumers. This led to an Internet of ‘Services’ where we could use applications directly in the cloud without installing them on our computers; there was a boom in electronic commerce. It has become an Internet of ‘People’ in recent years, primarily focused on fostering relationships between them. For this, a whole world of social networks has emerged with Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube applications.
At the point where we are, we can already speak of an Internet of Things, where communication is now carried out directly between machines, without requiring the intervention of people. For example, our mobile phone reports directly to Google’s servers where we are, which tells us if there is traffic, and all this without our requesting it.
Let’s see what actors intervene in this technology:
- Sensors/actuators: They will be in charge of collecting the data around them (sensors, such as the GPS of mobile) and transmitting them to their environment (actuators, such as the same mobile screen). This information will always be collected in real-time.
- Processors: They are the brain of this system. They will be in charge of treating this data and determining what information is relevant to transmit. Continuing with the example of the mobile phone, if we spend several hours in the same place, what sense would it make for the mobile phone to be transmitting its same position to the Internet, causing on the one hand more traffic on the network and the other, causing the mobile battery to be depleted more quickly. This process will also always be done in real-time.
- Gateways: Although the number of devices with an Internet connection continues to grow, there are still many computers that do not have this capacity. For this reason, in many cases, these gateways are used to provide them with this access.
- Applications: These are the consumer programs of all that information received. They will be the endpoint of this communication. They will give meaning to all that information, generating patterns, applying Business Intelligence, etc.
This will impact technology; To begin with, the data traffic on the networks will increase substantially, and of course, many more servers will be necessary to store all this information.
On the other hand, it is necessary to increase security in this type of technology. As technology grows, the number of cyberattacks increases. No one is going to want the information on their computers to be accessible to unauthorized people. In addition, as we have spoken, we are not only going to receive information, but we can remotely control some of this equipment. This power in the wrong hands can cause accidents that could even be fatal.
We started by saying that all this is already a reality using smart led lighting. Well, proof of this is that the entire industry is already committed to this technology in all areas. Industrial companies of the relevance of Siemens with its MindSphere platform and of course the big ones in the technology sector, such as IBM, with its IBM Watson IoT platform, Microsoft Azure, Google with its “Brillo OS Operating System for Internet of Things,” Amazon with AWS IoT, SAP Leonardo, etc., they are an excellent example of this.
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