The Internet of Things, abbreviated IoT, reaches into almost all aspects of modern society. Smartphones, tablets, laptops, Bluetooth headsets, smart cars, smart houses, and smart classrooms are only the tip of the iceberg. There are IoT devices which monitor machinery functionality in real time, you can monitor shipping convoys in real time and more.
Because of cloud computing, big data functionality which treats IoT like individual data nodes in a massive synthetic “neural” network provides greater insight than ever before. Think of IoT like a massive brain—one that is, essentially, the size of the world. There are more IoT devices in operation today than there are people, and they’re only going to grow.
But how does this globe-spanning technologically profound movement affect you directly? What does it mean to you as a real person, living your life? Following, we’ll examine ten areas where IoT is most likely to interact with you either in a residential, occupational, or otherwise relevant capacity, and projects worth considering in that regard.
1. Windows 10, Raspberry Pi, And The Sky’s The Limit
Windows 10 or Linux can be loaded on the Raspberry Pi, which is a tiny little device you can fit in the palm of your hand. To understand, imagine you can take the most top-of-the-line desktop computer from about 2010, and put it inside a teddy bear or something. A Raspberry device can be plugged into the infrastructure of a building, and communicated with for many functions.
RasPi projects can be used to manage RFID databases in a hidden way accessible from your mobile device. You can set up an iBeacon. There are, as it turns out, hundreds—if not thousands—of applications that marry IoT and Raspberry Pi devices.
2. Humidity Sensors And Associated Response
Whether you’re in a small home, a small business, a small enterprise, or something of an internationally corporate variety, there are a lot of reasons you may want to know what humidity in your area is doing. With humidity sensors, you can more carefully manage to landscape on your property.
Additionally, you can keep your home either “open” or “buttoned up” with the swipe of a screen on a smartphone. When humidity gets ridiculously extreme, you can put the interior atmospheric controls on full power, or you can lean into it.
Big enough operations stand to “reap” the humidity from the air. Imagine cutting down use of water through IoT-controlled devices which naturally extract it from the atmosphere, and activate automatically based on humidity thresholds. As with Raspberry Pi, there are many applications for humidity controls as regards IoT.
3. IoT Air Control: A Bluetooth Ceiling Fan—Or What-Have-You
You can turn the ceiling fans on in a room with your smartphone. You fit an IoT device on the fan, sync it to your phone, and you’re good to go. Bluetooth can be brought to bear here with simple efficiency. Office or home, it’s nice to have control over devices from your phone. Virtually any device can be optimized in this way.
4. Air Quality Monitoring: Residential Or Occupational
The quality of air may need to be recorded for many reasons. In an occupational sense, having a device that measures air from day to day can give you evidence which may be used to obtain a tax credit for environmental friendliness.
Air quality inside your home should also be measured to help you see how clean you’re keeping things. This can help you identify if there’s anything you’re doing, or that the structure of your home is doing, to compromise air quality. For those who have illnesses which make them sensitive to airflow, this kind of thing can be very important.
5. Proactive Monitoring And Support, Decentralized Design, BYOD
Cloud computing allows for both proactive monitoring of apps, and the design of varying software from a decentralized location. Cloud computing can be conjoined with DaaS/DaaS: Desktop as a Service, and Device as a Service. Essentially, you can “float” your network on the cloud, decentralizing access, facilitating location-independent office infrastructure.
BYOD, or Bring Your Own Device, can substitute for device subscription if that’s more amenable to operations. Essentially, you can cut off the majority of costs from workspace, travel, parking, maintenance, and equipment. You could CEO an SMB with 150+ employees from your basement using decentralized cloud computing in conjunction with IoT.
That said, if you’re going to do this, you’ll need proper logging frameworks in place to keep track of everything for legal and operational purposes. Management of logs generated by IoT devices in the field is absolutely necessary, and there are apps which are designed just for this purposes, such as Papertrail—at this link you can learn more about Papertrail.
6. Automation Of Home Maintenance Functions
Ever seen a Roomba? Imagine this: you can automate watering the plants by installing spritzers as they have in grocery stores. You can keep floors clean with the Roomba. You can adjust the heat and cool with blinds and HVAC systems set to maintain homeostasis automatically, and which can be monitored via IoT to ensure systems functionality.
Home or business, IoT can maintain the premises automatically, and in a way that requires very little hands-on action except for when physical components need to be replaced in varying devices. Batteries, little motors, etc. IoT can tell you when this is necessary, and voila! You’ve got a control panel more powerful than NASA at your fingertips from your smartphone.
7. Buff Up Your Home’s Personal Security With Smart Cameras
There are too many indigents today, and many of them are on drugs. Homeless, drugged out people need money for their habit, and they’ll break into your house if they can. Now, this isn’t the case in all communities, but especially on the west coast, whether or not your home gets broken into is more a matter of “when” than “if” in non-gated communities.
Smart cameras which alert you, and record activity based on motion, can help you identify criminals, and help you safeguard your property. Again, such IoT functionality likewise applies to occupational domains.
8. Adding Smart Cameras To Vehicles Helps Secure Them, Too
If you’ve ever had your car broken into, you know that sinking feeling. Something is gone—just gone, and you don’t realize it until you get into another city and remember you didn’t lock the car. They stole your laptop because your car was unlocked. Or what if someone broke your window to steal a stereo?
Here’s a fix: install an IoT smart cam into your vehicle. You can Jerry-rig this with ease. Basically, stick the camera in the sunglasses spot, and have the camera only activate when you’re out of the car. Your smartphone can tell you when it needs to be charged, there’s likely a USB option. Switch out the cameras if you can’t find a good enough battery.
9. Gauging Air Pollution: Residential And Occupational
For scientific, residential, or manufacturing purposes, being able to gauge the level of air pollution is key. Doing so via IoT is as simple as syncing up the proper device and monitoring what it reports via smartphone.
10. Tracking Baggage, Phones, And Other Traveling Possessions
You can stick a beacon in your luggage, if it ends up at the wrong airport you can direct handlers to find it—keep those airlines honest! If you want to conduct a fun experiment with family, friends, or even a classroom, you can stick a tracking device in a postal parcel and monitor its transit across the country. There are many project applications here.
Picking IoT Projects Best For Your Home And Business
Some IoT projects are going to be more important than others. There’s a lot you can do here to manage your property, your business, or your assets. If you haven’t looked into IoT yet, you should. The web has jumped dimensions, coming out of the digital world into our physical realm. Find which IoT applications of this kind best match you and yours.
