About the Author

This is Sriparna Mondal.I am currently enrolled Masters program with major in Computer Science in Villanova University, USA .I created this blog to share stories and information of what we are doing in the course- Internet of Things.You are welcome to read my blog and share your suggestions.

Motivations for investigating IOT

The Internet of Things (IoT) is ushering in a new era in science and technology, which will forever change our personal as well as professional lives, our consumer habits, and the way we do business. With the fast-changing world, these latest inventions and innovations will become the norm by 2020, and we estimate more than 50 billion devices will be connected via the Internet.

Around $6 Trillion is estimated to be spent on the Internet of Things (IoT) solutions in the next five years. No price for guessing that the reason this amount is expected to be spent on IoT is that IoT has already shown a lot of potential in a very short time and it has just begun. There is not a single industry that is not impacted by IoT by now. Some have already had a major influence of IoT while some are just beginning to realize its importance.

Nowadays Internet of Things refers to a vast number of things that are connected to the internet that data can share with other things, it is not merely a step along the path to digital transformation; it is the driving force. By 2030, the IOT economic impact could reach US$12 trillion, or 12% of global economic value, and by 2035 the IOT could influence nearly the entire economy. At the center of the IOT are smart devices. They will come in every measurement and dimension, from Nanochips and smart device machines. The number of connected things will increase exponentially from 20 billion in 2015 to 200 billion in 2030.

Though, while the IOT seems to be just a technology, it  incorporates other important technologies, such as cloud computing, data analytics, mobile phones, sensors, and machine-to-machine connections. IOT doesn’t come from all the connections for it is real value it creates but from the data it generates. Data analytics in real time, the IOT becomes a live communications network for promoting insights and improvements. It will also become the base of Live Business, in which companies will be able the respond to customers now.

There are various reasons to be fascinated by IOT and taking this as a separate course.

1) IOT touching good societal causes :

With increased connections and improved access to high-speed networks, IoT can address and help solve many challenges mankind faces today.

I like the potential usage of IOT in following areas:

Carbon emission:

With more cars and trucks on the road than ever before, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have increased 90 percent since 1970. As the number of vehicles continues to increase, IOT can be used to help reduce both our carbon footprint.

Water waste:

According the Center for Neighborhood Technology (CNT), six billion gallons of water are lost per day due to undetected leaks from aging water infrastructure. Many of these leaks occur because 30 percent of pipes (serving over 100,000 people) are between 40 and 80 years old.

Additionally, outdoor irrigation makes up about 60 percent of watering, and about 50 percent of it is wasted.

To combat this waste, smart irrigation solutions enabled by IoT technologies can save millions of gallons of water annually by watering only when there’s no rain and when the soil moisture level indicates a need.

Food waste:

Statistics says – approximately 40 percent of food produced goes to waste, and 95 percent of that waste ends up in a landfill or incinerator that creates methane gas, a potent GHG in the atmosphere.

Grind2Energy, a product offered by Emerson, is an industrial grinder paired with smart controls developed in collaboration with AT&T. The grinder creates food waste slurry, and instead of sending this waste to a landfill, it can be anaerobically digested to produce renewable energy in the forms of electricity, heat, or compressed natural gas that can be used for vehicle fuel.

Energy consumption:

In addition to convenient consumer applications that help individuals do their part to save energy in their homes, AT&T is using Smart Cities technologies to help cities manage their resources more effectively.

For example, we can use outdoor LED lighting in a city to create a digital infrastructure that helps address issues like traffic flow and parking optimization, which could help citizens save time and fuel. Smart lighting can also help maintenance crews remotely manage a city’s entire lighting system without the need to drive around town to find and replace broken bulbs.

Health, Safety and Accessibility:

The initiative Together for Safer Roads, which is focused on reducing the number of fatalities on the road. Big data, mobile, and IoT technology are helping make corridors in cities like Atlanta safer.

Aira smart glasses powered by AT&T connect the blind and people with low vision to certified agents at the tap of a button, offering them immediate assistance with virtually any task – anytime, anywhere. Cities are also using beacon technology via an app to help people who are blind reach their destination and explore the other amenities around them.

There are some awesome projects like M-Kopa Solar, Farmer line, M-Farm are major successes of IOT in Africa. We cannot ignore the fact that IoT is the next wave of innovation that will lead to the “humanization” of every object in our day to day life using automation. This very fact draws me to investigate IOT.

2) Lots of scope to learn new things and innovate:

IOT is still very emerging field, numerous challenges are coming to light and we have a lot to do. Some of which are –

• Meeting increased customer expectations
• Easing security concerns
• Keeping IOT hardware updated
• Overcoming connectivity issues

All these will give good scope to work on new stuffs and satisfy my technical quest as well as contributing good towards society.

3) Good scope to work on multiple technologies:

Convergence of complementary technologies such as machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and big data will play a major role to ensure that the implementation of IoT becomes much faster and easier and therefore leading to improved aspects of our lives be it at home, at work or anywhere that comes in between the two.

So, as implementor of IOT, there will be option to work on multiple new technologies.

4) Better career opportunities:

With estimation of more than 50 billion devices will be connected via the Internet by 2020 and IOT setting footsteps in large number of sectors from home automation to agriculture to transportation to healthcare, IOT is surely going to be a game changer. There will be requirement of big number of employees in future, making IOT a hot job opportunity.

IoT application domain most interest me

IoT applications promise to bring immense value into our lives. With newer wireless networks, superior sensors and revolutionary computing capabilities, the Internet of Things could be the next frontier in the race for its share of the wallet.

I will talk about two application domains which interest me now ( the order is per my level of interest).

1.Smart Home

2.Healthcare

>Smart Home:

Using IoT, it is possible to monitor and control mechanical, electrical and electronic systems in various buildings using one single system. The main advantages that are attributed to the interconnection of devices include efficient energy management systems for buildings and hence promotion of a greener economy, massive data collection which could be a major driver for data science and machine learning, real-time monitoring which provides for efficiency and accuracy when monitoring remote systems.

Factors interest me here:

–     Possible to manage all home devices from one place: Being able to keep all the technology in your home connected through one interface is a massive step forward for technology and home management. Users have to learn how to use one app on their smartphone and tablet, and they’ll be able to tap into countless functions and devices throughout their homes. This cuts way back on the learning curve for new users.

–     Flexibility for new devices and appliances: Smart home systems tend to be wonderfully flexible when it comes to the accommodation of new devices and appliances and other technology.

–     Maximizing home security: Home automation systems can connect motion detectors, surveillance cameras, automated door locks, and other tangible security measures throughout home so user can activate them from one mobile device before heading to bed. User can also choose to receive security alerts on various devices depending on the time of day an alert goes off and monitor activities in real-time whether users’ in the house or halfway around the globe.

–     Remote control of home functions: It gives the power of being able to control home’s functions from a distance. On an exceptionally hot day, it is possible to order user’s house to become cooler in just enough time before the user gets home from work.

–     Increased energy efficiency: It’s possible to make your space more energy-efficient. For example, it is possible to have more precise control over the heating and cooling of the home with a programmable smart thermostat .

–     Home management insights: There’s also something to be said for the ability to tap into insights on how home operates. From these insights, users may be able to analyze daily habits and behaviors and adjust to live the lifestyle they desire.

>Healthcare:

IoT’s modest beginnings in healthcare can be traced to the use of remote monitoring, smart sensors and medical device integration as well as activity trackers, wearable biometric sensors, glucose monitors, medication dispensers and smart beds. The following use cases draw my interest in this domain.

–Reducing Emergency Wait times:

Few things are as dull and boring as a visit to the emergency room. Apart from the resulting medical expenses, emergency room visits can sometimes take hours to complete. Thanks to some recent ingenuity and the IoT, at least one hospital — Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York City — effectively slashed wait times for 50% of their emergency room patients who are in need of inpatient care.

-Remote Health and Monitoring:

In some cases, patients don’t even have to visit an emergency room or hospital. One of the most obvious and popular applications of healthcare and the IoT is in remote health monitoring — sometimes known as telehealth. Not only does it minimize costs and eliminate the need for some visitations, but it helps improve the patient’s quality of living by sparing them the inconvenience of travel.

-Ensuring the Availability and Accessibility of Critical Hardware:

Modern hospitals require next-gen software and hardware to function — some are even used to save or sustain human life. Like all electronic devices, this equipment is prone to numerous risks — from power outages to system failures — that could be a matter of life or death. A new IoT-driven solution from Philips, called e-Alert, aims to solve that problem. Instead of waiting for a device to fail, Philips’ new system takes a proactive approach by virtually monitoring medical hardware and alerting hospital staff members if there’s a problem.

-Tracking Staff, Patients and Inventory:

Safety is the utmost concern of any hospital or medical facility — or at least it should be. It’s hard to maintain the maximum amount of security without the ability to track assets — staff members, patients and hardware — throughout the building. Many are turning to the IoT and real-time location systems to facilitate asset tracking. Not only is it an inexpensive method of monitoring day-to-day activities in a hospital setting, but it’s unobtrusive, effective and cutting-edge.

-Enhanced Drug Management:

One of the most exciting breakthroughs regarding healthcare and IoT comes in new forms of prescription medication. It seems like a work of science fiction — but pills containing microscopic sensors that are the size of a grain of rice can send a signal to an external device — usually a patch worn on the body, to ensure proper dosage and usage.

-Addressing Chronic Disease:

Recurring health problems are never exciting, but big breakthroughs are being made in the treatment of such issues — and much of it is a direct result of the IoT. There isn’t one innovation or device that’s helping treat chronic disease in the 21st century — it’s the combination of wearable tech, next-gen analytics and mobile connectivity. Utilities like Fitbit use the IoT to monitor personal health — such information can be shared with a doctor to help solve recurring issues.

Type of applications used in Smart Home and benefits people get from them.

The most common applications of Home automation are lighting control, HVAC, outdoor lawn irrigation, kitchen appliances, and security systems.

Explaining each application and their benefits in short –

• Lighting control: Smart lighting allows user to control wall switches, blinds, and lamps, but how intuitive is a lighting control system? It turns out, quite; its capabilities are extensive. Users are able to schedule the times lights should turn on and off, decide which specific rooms should be illuminated at certain times, select the level of light which should be emitted, and choose how particular lights react through motion sensitivity, which is both affordable and easy to use with its plug-and-play simplicity.
• HVAC Regulation: No Longer Burned by Heating Bill: As fuel costs rise and the availability and sustainability of our resources becomes a greater concern, heating/cooling our homes efficiently is less a budgetary bonus and more of a necessity. Over the past year, smart thermostats and automated home heating systems have become more readily available and easily incorporate into any home. Heating and cooling our homes consume an average of 50% of energy costs yearly, making daily HVAC regulation progressively rewarding. Maintaining a substantial lead among the nearly non-existent competition, the Nest Learning Thermostat, learns your heating and cooling preferences over time, eliminating the need for programming and is accessible from user’s smartphone app. With automated HVAC users are able to reduce the heat when a room is unoccupied and increase or decrease it at specific times based on user’s  schedule and occupancy.
• Lawn Irrigation Systems : A lush and healthy lawn is a source of pride for most homeowners, but the weather doesn’t always cooperate and provide the adequate elements for a flourishing landscape. For decades we’ve relied on sprinkler systems to keep our yards at peak presentation, but at what cost? The average American home spends approximately 30% of their daily water usage on lawn and garden maintenance. Nearly half of that amount is wasted due to inefficiency. If you apply that statistic to the national average, up to 4.5 billion gallons of water is wasted per day through ineffective watering methods.  If we reflect upon the monetary impact of this, it results in Americans spending over a thousand dollars a year in water, with a portion of that being waste. The global effects are even greater when you consider the growing concern over climate change and the dramatic decrease in agricultural natural resources. However, sprinkler control systems, like Skydrop, are providing water regulation through real-time communication with local weather data.  If a rainstorm develops and deposits two inches of rainwater on your lawn, the automated sprinkler detects the saturation and disables its scheduled watering. Conversely, the system will be alerted to dry conditions and supply the necessary amount of nourishment, without over-watering.
• Smart Appliances : Smart refrigerators, such as LG’s Smart ThinQ, allow user to scan grocery store receipts and keep an inventory of user’s items, and alerts user if an item is about to expire. More impressively, it suggests recipes based on user’s refrigerator’s contents and lets the user know when it needs to replace items. Smart ovens synch with user’s smartphone and automatically preheat to the correct temperature based on a recipe selected from user’s database. While these appliance options seem a bit superficial and convenience based, there is a conservation factor as well. By automating user’s kitchen appliance and making them accessible from smart device, user will be able to sever the electricity supplied to unused appliances and reduce energy consumption and costs. Considering the number of appliances, the average household owns; this could save a substantial amount of money over time.
• Security System: While efficiency and conservation are certainly IoT benefits, its potential to have improved control over home security is a primary focus. Smart locks, like Kwikset’s Kevo, a Bluetooth enabled electronic deadbolt, and various connected home security systems, such as iSmartAlarm, offer a variety of features including door and window sensors, motion detectors, video cameras and recording mechanisms. All of which are connected to a mobile device and accessible via the cloud, thus enabling you to access real-time information on the security status of user’s home. Naturally, there is a great deal of scrutiny regarding the level of trust in controlling your home’s security system via a mobile device, but it begs earnest exploration when weighing the potential benefits and peace of mind it provides homeowners.

IoT Platform interested in exploring

A multi-layer technology which is used to manage and automate the connected devices is known as the IoT platform. In other words, it is a service which helps you in bringing the physical objects online. This platform will provide you with the services to connect the devices for a machine to machine communication. 

To evaluate a production-grade IoT platform , the following list of criteria needs to be evaluated.

• Scalability
• Reliability
• Customization
• Operations
• Protocols
• Hardware-agnostic
• Cloud-agnostic
• Support
• Architecture & Technology Stack
• Security
• Cost

Refer to this link for more details – https://medium.com/iotforall/how-to-choose-your-iot-platform-should-you-go-open-source-23148a0809f3

Two open source platforms are likely to be explored by me.

1)ThingSpeak

ThingSpeak is regarded as the topmost open source platform for IoT. It’s an IoT application and uses an API to store and retrieve data from things using the HTTP protocol. It facilitates the creation of sensor logging applications, location tracking applications and a social network of things with status updates.ThingSpeak provides instant visualizations of data posted by devices. With the ability to execute MATLAB® code it is possible to perform online analysis and processing of the data as it comes in. ThingSpeak is often used for prototyping and proof of concept IoT systems that require analytics.

–Website: https://thingspeak.com/

–Differentiating Features:

• Easily configure devices to send data to ThingSpeak using popular IoT protocols.
• Fully supports a range of development boards like Arduino, ESP8266, BeagleBone and Pi.
• Real-time visualization of sensor data and data aggregation using third party sources.
• Capability to aggregate data on-demand from third-party sources.
• Use the power of MATLAB to make sense of your IoT data.
• Run your IoT analytics automatically based on schedules or events.
• Enables the prototyping and building of IoT systems without any server setup and Web software installation.
• Automatically act on your data and communicate using third-party services like Twilio® or Twitter®.

2) DeviceHive:

DeviceHive is an open source IoT data platform that facilitates the connectivity of devices to the cloud within a short interval of time, i.e., just a few minutes to allow streaming of data and command traversal. The platform is distributed under the Apache 2.0 licence and is highly scalable via containerisation. It supports Docker Compose and Kubernetes deployment through which public, private or even hybrid clouds can be deployed from a single machine to extensive enterprise clusters. DeviceHive facilitates connectivity to any device or development board via the REST API, WebSockets or MQTT.

–Website: https://devicehive.com/

–Differentiating Features

• Very well support for Big Data solutions like Spark, Cassandra, Kafka and ElasticSearch.
• Highly customised behaviour using JavaScript.
• Allows batch analytics and machine learning on top of device data.
• Connects any device using the REST API, MQTT or WebSockets.
• Direct integration with Alexa.
• Support IOS, Android and other libraries.
• Can be downloaded on public, private or hybrid clouds.
• Seamlessly stream data through direct integration.
• Connect any devices with internet support.
• Free to use and change, though also having fixed price services.