WHAT IS IOT?

Internet of Things

Since the arrival of the Internet in our lives, it has evolved in a fast and overwhelming way, from those rudimentary 56 KB modems to the very fast and efficient current fiber optic lines. Today we can connect our mobiles, printers, Smart TV, IP cameras, GPS and many other electronic devices with this functionality to the Internet, but have we reached the limit or is this just the beginning of a new Internet era?

A few years ago we started to talk about IoT (Internet of things), being only a bet for the future and starting to be an absolute reality today.

It is more and more frequent to find new devices capable of connecting to the Internet and allowing the user to control and manage it remotely from anywhere in the world, but this has only just begun.

What exactly is the Internet of Things IoT?

We could define the Internet of things as the consolidation through the network of networks of a "network" that hosts a large number of objects or devices, that is, being able to have connected to it all the things in this world such as vehicles, appliances, mechanical devices, or simply objects such as shoes, furniture, luggage, measuring devices, biosensors, or any object that we can imagine.

What will it offer us?

Like the vast majority of technological advances, the goal of this technology is to make our lives more comfortable as well as to provide greater security in various areas. Let's take an example: Imagine a fridge that can warn us when the temperature drops, or indicate that a food item has expired or has gone out of date, or a desk that can record where each item has been left, or that we can find out where each object is, that belongs to us, at any given time, or control our entire home from a smartphone or PC (from the front door to the toilet chain), or that we are warned of allergens and their concentration in the air on a bracelet for allergy sufferers, or millions of scenarios to discover. These are some examples of everything that could allow us to play the Internet of things, nothing new for those of us who have been working in home automation and control for more than 16 years, just a new way of giving a boost to M2M, home automation, inmotics ... and pure control.

Is it really possible to connect everything to the network?

The answer is yes, not right now, but in a very short time. The main drawback that is delaying this progress is the addressing limitation offered by the current ipv4 protocol, where it would not be possible to interconnect such a number of devices and objects. For this reason, the transition to ipv6, the new addressing protocol that will allow almost unlimited interconnection of any object and the evolution and implementation of the Internet of Things, is now imminent.

Once this obstacle has been avoided, and with the progressive cheapening of this technology over time, it will not only be possible, but also necessary due to its usefulness and the great amount of applications that we will be able to carry out with the Internet of Things. Think about intelligent clothes, about gadgets implanted in our bodies to watch over our health,... or why not? in bags of snacks in the supermarkets denying us their purchase because they contain contraindications in our health record.

How does the Internet of Things affect our lives in terms of security and privacy?

Well, here, as always we find the eternal dichotomy, if we interpret the advantages in terms of physical security or goods, undoubtedly we are moving towards a safer environment, if on the contrary we realize that all this exchange of information ends up being very particular, and personal, of each of us, and that it speaks of trends, tastes, desires, passions. ..medical data, hobbies, sensations, current variables,..., because then security becomes a "control in other people's hands" (euphemistically THE CLOUD) which makes us more and more vulnerable (euphemistically BIG DATA).

In this way, focusing the physical security and goods in the life of any person, either on his person, on his business, home, etc., will have a very important role, either increasing the security in homes, vehicles, and personal property or simply on people.

Returning to one of the previous examples, if each and every one of the objects had its own particular connection to the Internet, we would be able to know where that object is at any given time and therefore reduce the possibility of losing it to practically zero. On the other hand, security in buildings, homes and factories would be increased exponentially, since with an endless number of objects that are sensorized and monitored, there would be no details that would escape. Intrusion warnings, water leaks, fires, databases with everything that has happened in a home are some of the multiple functions that we would be able to perform. As for personal safety will also be increased with objects such as watches that could take the pulse and act accordingly, for example in case of cardiac arrest call directly to emergencies, devices that alert us before suffering an asthma crisis eg. All this and much more is what could be achieved with new technologies and all these new concepts, no matter if they are called domotics, inmotics, AmI, Ambiance Intelligence.

Like everything in this life, the technological avalanche is unstoppable, the benefits inexcusable.... and the rest of society will have to put a stop to factors that have to do with privacy, rights and duties, and everything related to the recognition of personal dignity.

What capacities will it be equipped with?

(If we knew everything...the future of our work would not make much sense, we continue to investigate)

• Communication and cooperation: the objects shall have the ability to connect to Internet services and/or to each other, being able to exchange and update data between them and establish communications with the servers.
• Addressing capacity: This kind of devices will be able to be configured and located from any place in the network.
• Identification: Objects can be identified using technologies such as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification), NFC (Near Field Communication), optical reading barcodes, or hundreds of other ways to identify a device in a network.
• Location: They will have knowledge of their physical location at all times, being able to know where they are at all times.
• Action: Certain objects will be able to manipulate their environment.

What will be the intelligence levels of these devices?

According to the experts there will be at least 4 levels of intelligence:

• Level 1: Identity. The object will be able to identify itself in a unique way
• Level 2: Location. You will be able to know where the object is or where it has been.
• Level 3: Status. You will be able to communicate the state it is in as well as its characteristics.
• Level 4: Context. The object will be able to perceive the environment in which it is located.

If we analyze it here we find this classification very childish since it is thought under the premise of devices a little "silly", and of course, what today makes possible the market makes the classification more diverse, and we could add levels like:

• Level 5: Criterion. The object communicates, identifies itself, locates itself, analyzes its environment, decides and executes according to its criteria.

What communication protocols will the IoT use?

This is always a dilemma, no matter if we are talking about M2M, domotics... or industrial automation, a lot of initiatives are launched to try to combine a protocol that serves as a standard and somehow takes into account the idiosyncrasy of the systems we want to put in scene.

And while we have Zigbee (IEEE 802.15.4), Bluetooth LTE, 6LowPan, WiFi, GSM (with all their respective Gs), or other hopeful as SigFox ... and of course a wonderful TCP / IP world that we know is capable of deploying global networks, but is not designed to put their old architectures directly into sensors that should work, at least some, for decades, ie self-sufficient in the issue of load (solar, wind. .etc) or self-efficient in the consumption issue, well, this without talking about a hundred and one thousand conjectures dealing with the protagonism for the big business that is coming.

In Domodesk we see that initiatives in work groups as RPL Routing Protocol for Low-Power and Lossy Networks (http://tools.ietf. org/html/rfc6550 ) begin to think in architectures that make possible the millions of possible scenarios if we want an Internet of Everything that works, or as this group defines the OF (objective functions), because it should not be the same priority a MEMS that tries to tell to our doctor and assistance service that we are suffering a heart attack, that a sensor that is taking care of monitoring the efficiency of our air conditioning system, and also the hierarchy and the paths that the signal must follow until it finds a meeting point that controls its IPv6 addressing, as you can see the "jar comedy" is directly proportional to the objective of filling everything with intelligent communication possibilities, and there is a lot to define.

But at Domodesk we have already bet for a long time for TCP/IP and Wireless with grid topology (key element...the MESH), and it doesn't cost much to extrapolate this to what will be a bigger house, the one of all, the planet ;-)

What is an M2M device and what parts does it consist of?

As we have discussed above of M2M devices as they are a technology conducive to the development of the Internet of things we will make a brief description of what they are.

M2M devices (machine to machine) as its name suggests are devices capable of establishing communication with both the server and other M2M devices.

The parts of which it consists are the following:

• Management devices: This group includes all those machines or devices whose task will be to manage data (home alarms, meters, information panels, points of sale, etc.)
• M2M devices: will be those devices (modules) that connected remotely to any machine collect information and maintain communication with the server. Eventually also have the ability to process information individually.
• Server: It will be the system that sends and receives this information from the machines and at the same time makes an efficient management of it.
• Communication network: This is the physical means by which the information travels and can be of two types: wired and wireless, the latter being the usual method since in principle it lacks logic to implement the Internet of things by cable unless it is some very specific device.

What has been the evolution of the Internet of things?

We can talk about its first steps in 1990 when John Romkey and Simon Hacket managed to design a toaster with Internet connectivity, being able to determine its on and off from any computer and configure the toasting time.

From that moment on, the potential of connecting certain devices to the Internet was known, but it was in 1999 when the basic concepts of the Internet of Things were introduced by engineer Bill Joy, who realized the importance of this aspect when automating and having control over an unthinkable multitude of devices, scenarios that were also proposed by JINI and UPnP.

We go back to 2009 where the term was baptized thanks to an article published by Kevin Ashton on July 12, 2009, this article spoke of the great functionality that could bring connecting everything to the network to count the objects, devices, know the position in which they are, their status and that they could give us information about the environment in which they are.

A few years before, a study was carried out in which it was determined that around a billion devices were connected to the Internet between consoles, computers, mobiles, etc.

The company CISCO, formulated through a study that the amount of electronic devices connected to the network was higher than the world population.

Finally, from 2011 the Internet addressing protocol IPv6 will be designed, making it possible to identify an infinite number of addresses and making the IoT possible, since it is estimated that in less than 10 years there will be nearly 50 billion devices connected to the network.

When is a large scale implementation of IoT expected to be possible?

There is no exact date, but what is clear is that with the speed with which technology advances, with circuits that are increasingly cheaper and smaller, and the incredible evolution of computer networks and the possibilities that this offers, it won't be long, it will be 5, 10 or 15 years, but what is demonstrated is that it is already beginning to be a fact, it is there, and it is possibly together with robotics the closest future that we can observe, we only have to look at the thousands of crowdfunding campaigns (a fashionable word for democratizing investments). .., in short, to make the fans pay) with thousands of gadgets bidding for a role in this world.

It's 2014, let's welcome the new era of Internet, THE INTERNET OF THINGS, and let us in Domodesk continue accompanying you, at least, 16 years more :-), not in vain, put the electronics to work in network for the enjoyment and utility of the people, is domotic, pure and hard.

As of July 2014, we see this as the panorama of initiatives that seek a piece of the limelight in the world of home automation, the Internet of Things IoT, or call it, if you will, a utopia of a quasi-infinite world of connected objects, communicating with each other to, according to all, make our lives easier and putting people at the center of taking advantage of technological advances.

The game of teaming up with the winning horse becomes a nightmare for everyone, from hardware manufacturers to the big names in electronic consumption, which is why many of us see them flirting with various standards, communication protocols or rehashed from other times.