What is Internet of Things?
The Internet of Things, or IoT is influencing our lifestyle from the way we react to the way we behave.
From air conditioners that you can control with your smartphone to smart cars providing the shortest route, or your smartwatch, which is tracking your daily activities.
IoT is a giant network connected device. These devices gather and share data about how they're used, and the environment in which they're operated. It's sold on using sensors, sensors are embedded in every physical device.
It can be your mobile phone, electrical appliances, vehicles, barcode sensors, traffic lights, and almost everything that you come across in day to day life. These sensors continuously image data about the working state of the devices.
How Does IoT Works?
But the important question is, how do they share this huge amount of data? And how do we put this data to our benefit?
IoT provides a common platform for all these devices to dump their data, and a common language for all the devices to communicate with each other. Data is emitted from various sensors and sent to IoT platforms securely.
IoT platform integrates the collected data from various sources, further analysis is performed on the data and valuable information is extracted as per requirement. Finally, the result is shared with other devices for better user experience, automation and improving efficiencies. Let us look at a scenario where IoT is doing wonders.
In an AC manufacturing industry. Both the manufacturing machine and the belt have sensors attached. They continuously send data regarding the machine health on the production specifics to the manufacturer to identify issues beforehand.
A barcode is attached to each product before leaving the belt. It contains the product code, manufacturer details, special instructions, etc. The manufacturer uses this data to identify where the product was distributed, and track the retailer's veteran, hence the manufacturer can make the product running out of stock available.
Next, his products are packed and parcelled to different retailers. Each retailer has a barcode reader that has to track the products coming from different manufacturers, manage inventory, check special instructions and many more. The compressor of the air conditioner has an embedded sensor that emits data regarding its health and temperature.
This data is not analyzed continuously, allowing the customer care to contact you for the repair work in time. This is just one of millions of scenarios. We have smart appliances, smart cars, smart homes, smart cities, where IoT is redefining our lifestyle and transforming the way we interact with technologies.
The future of the IoT industry is huge. Business Insider intelligence estimates that 24 billion IoT devices will be installed by 2020. And IDC predicts that IoT revenue will reach around 357 billion in 2021. resulting in a lot of job opportunities in the IT industry.