Warning: Use of undefined constant user_level - assumed 'user_level' (this will throw an Error in a future version of PHP) in /home/xdsse/public_html/wp-content/plugins/ultimate-google-analytics/ultimate_ga.php on line 524
I continue my 750 words per day project and here is yet another text from one of those sessions. The Internet of things is one of the hottest buzz words of 2014 it seem but what is it all about?
The Internet of things is really the appliance of networked technology into every day appliances. An example of Internet of things that we have been using for quite some time is that as a runner I can have a heartbeat monitor on my body that is wirelessly connected to my wrist watch where a GPS is tracking my moves. This makes it so that when I have been walking about or been out on a run I can sync all this data and replay the route I took, see on a map where I’ve been, the times when I was at specific points and at the same time the exact heartbeat I had when I was there. I am using multiple small devices that can communicate with each others to give me more data out of things I do. But there is more!
It can however also be dead but connected things as a bottle of milk with an attached RFID chip which will identify it as a bottle of milk for anyone listening after RFIDs. This same tech could also be used to connect my home to a network where the different parts can communicate with each others.
Let’s look at a theoretical example; when I lock the last entrance door to the house, all lights should go off to conserve energy. At the same time, the dishwasher and the washing machine should start so that they are ready when I get back home. When I leave in the morning its usually about nine or ten hours until I get back home so the temperature of the air in the house can be lowered and I do not need any warm water at that point. When I usually get home in the night the house then have prepared for my arrival by getting all my default settings back into action. It could also mean that the house understand that I usually leave the place at seven am in the morning. If it is also frozen outside it could start the heater in the car as well as the engine heater if it’s really cold so that when I arrive to the car, it’s all ready to go. Now to do this there is a number of systems that must speak to each other and also listen in on various measurements.
The Internet of things that has already exploded has been in health appliances where there are multiple services that offer step counter, heartbeat monitors, blood sugar measurements and other things that can be used as parameters in deciding if a persons health is good or not. Or to be used as positive feedback for an unhealthy person to start getting into shape.
The health products we’ve seen this far have been quite bulky and not really made to be life appliances. They have been designed to be seen so that the hype of the product can keep on going and more products to be sold. I believe that this will change quite drastically in 2014 and the devices that are introduced to the market will be quite ordinary looking and instead trying to melt in towards the regular products. There is of course one company that will most defiantly get into this market that will not at all design products to look ordinary and that is Apple.
When Apple are to create life logging products they will do it with their minimal design as they always do but they will put a premium feel to the product. They will create products that feature wise will do about the same as the competition but they will absolutely apply a premium feel to it.
A good example of this was with the iPhone where they introduced a phone that had almost the same features that everybody else had but they made it look good, solid and as it was a brick of quality you were carrying around.
The will do the same for life loggers and the ever so discussed Apple wrist-watch will most definitely show of a life-logger which will be a device to utilize the internet of things at it’s core.