Eli5: What is internet of things (IoT)?
In: Technology
It’s the idea that everything that is electronic has an internet connection so that it can receive and send data. A few years ago, no ones tv was connected to the internet. Now all new tv’s are connected to the internet. The same thing with doorbells or home aircon. Over time this could expand to everything that you could think of.
It refers to ordinary objects in the house that can connect to the internet eg your fridge, or your child’s dolls
“Internet of Things” or IoT is a marketing term that describes the new trend of connecting anything and everything to the internet. The idea is that every appliance in your home, every electric meter on every building, every streetlight, ever car, every computer, etc. are all connected to the internet at all times. It’s supposed to let devices communicate with one another in real time. Say, your Air Conditioner only runs when it communicates with your electric meter and determines that electricity currently costs a lower rate than usual. Or your fridge can send you an alert on your phone that you’re out of milk and you need to pick some up while you’re at the store. Or that your car needs an oil change soon, and that you need to schedule a service appointment.
In reality, it’s moreso that a ton of “Smart Home” products are popping up. Things like internet connected lightbulbs and internet connected toasters. The term is mostly used as a joke amongst people that work in the technology field, because the standard of what constitutes an “Internet of Things” device is so poorly defined that each individual manufacturer of device has their own mobile app that often doesn’t work very well, and the promise of “Everything works with everything” was never fully realized.
You have things, washing machines, fridges, TVs, cars, etc. They are pretty dumb things, you need to push buttons to operate them. What if we add sensors and software to make them smart and connect all of them. Say you want to go to the shop after work but you forgot to make a shopping list, what if your fridge registers the items in it and you can check them with an app. Another good example would be smartwatches.
Basically you want the things to operate in unison via internet connection, you want your things to collect information so you have something to analyse and make your life more efficient or just a remote for your AC, the robovacuum clean tracking your movements to do less redundant cleaning. The goal is to optimize your things but you can probably see how it raises questions about privacy and security.
As you can see this would be a great topic for a high-school student to write a pro-con essay about.
You have a bunch of Things.
These connect to a part of the internet.
Not much else connects to this part of the internet.
Which gives us an internet of things.
A lot of internet is for the end user – meaning person. Websites and services and such. Things you can interact with.
Then there’s a lot of internet that’s just file servers and databases and internal networks that are connected to internet somehow and control systems for various networked things, from hydroelectric dams to heat exchangers to automated factory machines to security cameras. Often called deep web (not to be mistaken for dark web).
Internet of things is (was) subset of the latter. Originally, some sort of CNC machine had internet accessibility back to factory that produced it, for servicing purposes and firmware updates or whatever, but nowadays it’s spread a lot and is more interactable for end user as well (apps and such) – so it’s not so “deep” anymore, and even refrigerators and washing machines and light bulbs connect to internet, thus a new phrase was invented for this.
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