This series of articles are the study notes of "An Introduction to Programming the Internet of Things", by Prof. Harris, Department of Computer Science, University of California, Irvine. This article is week 1, lessen 1: Definition of the Internet of Things (IoT). Thisarticle is the notes of Lesson2: Trends in the Adoption of the Internet of Things (IoT).
One trend is cost, is the straight cost of devices, computational technology has gotten alot cheaper than it used to be.
Computational technology has also shrunk and gotten lighter to the point that it can be incorporated in lots of different devices. Smaller size and less weight needed to incorporate computation into devices.
This is a picture of ENIAC 1945, 1800 square feet, 27 tons
A laptop computer today: 0.05 square feet, under 3 pounds
Another trend is Internet access. Internet is available almost everywhere in the developed world. So, in 1945the Internet didn't exist. Networking wasn't there, but Internet access has improved. So, the Internet is reachable from a lot of places. First, it exists.It didn't used to exist. But now it's also true that in lots of different places, almost everywhere, you can access the Internet through some mechanism. Alsothe fact that you can do Internet access wirelessly. That actually helps awhole lot because running cables is expensive. Where putting up a wireless router is much less expensive.
This lecture we'll talk about the pervasive nature ofIoT. The fact that IoT is everywhere, and even though we're not necessarily awareof it all the time. It's there and it's helpful. So not only is it everywhere, it'salso networked. So it gives you access to all these abilities, all thesefeatures of things that are in the network and it gives you access to them atall times. So it's sort of a constant connection. So there are a lot ofabilities to that, it makes it very powerful.
First, a lot of what you can think of asIoT devices, you can see them as an interface to the Cloud. By the Cloud, I mean big, powerful computer servers that are accessed through the Internet. And these compute servers can doa variety of things for you. And we can see that devices, small devices, IoTdevices, are basically a window to these Cloud servers.
IoT is also pervasive. Since networking is pervasive, IoT is pervasive, which means it is everywhere. It is embedded in devices and you're not necessarily aware of that, but they're all over the place and if you just look around whatever room you'rein, you'll probably see these devices. I mean, of course, There are cameras allover, microphones and all this, projectors, things like this. They're all inthis room. My watch, my phone, they're all over the place just helping me invarious ways. So if you look at your house, you think about inside your house, how many computers you have inside of your house, traditional computers, laptop, desktop. But if I think of how many IoT devices I have, a lot more, my DVR, my fridge, my microwave oven, my TV, etc. There's so many IoT devices just everywhere.
At home
Atwork
At work, we have motion sensors in every room. For lighting, to save the power on lights, the lights go off if there's no motion in the room. So they have motion sensors in every room, down everyhall, checking to see if something's moving and if they need to keep the lights off or on. But using video surveillance devices, you know, the ATM had a camera and they used that to catch the crook, right. There are devices all over the place that are surveilling us for beneficial purposes. Like traffic light cams. Now traffic light cams, it's beneficial, they go to ticket you. I don't likeit, right, but I can see the social benefit to being able to track when somebody runs a light and giving people tickets. So IoT is everywhere, in all sorts of devices that you interact with every day.