Review and Summary

[From the last episode: ISPs also have various strategies for the IoTThe Internet of Things. A broad term covering many different applications where "things"  are interconnected through the internet., with some including smart-home offerings.]

We’ve covered a lot of ground since our last review and summary, which was at the beginning of the year. We’ve looked at items generically affecting the IoT, and we dug a bit more into communications concepts – with the ultimate goal of understanding interoperation better. That let us look at the different major offerings in place today.

Specifically, we saw that:

• There is a national conversation in the US regarding the IoT, helping to focus developers.
• We looked at the reasons you might buy an IoT device: because you have a problem for which there is now a solution. Not all IoT devices seem to solve a problem; the most promising ones do.
• Before we launched into more communications concepts, we collected many of the questions that you should ask when buying an IoT device into a checklist.
• We then looked at the notion of communications stacks, starting with a made-up-but-real-world snail-mail example, then how that example might work with a real stack, and then a closer look at the layers of a real stackRelated to communications: A way of organizing parts of a complicated process (like communications) so that any task relies on tasks below it and feeds the tasks above it. Related to computing: A place in memory where you store “where was I?” information when you go from, say, one function into another. Before starting a new function, you store where you were in the old one so that, when the new function ends and you’re back in the old one, you can figure out where you were and continue on..
• Then we looked at conventions, protocols, and standards – important for interop.
• We further developed those ideas to look at alliances and ecosystems and how standards play into the different communications stack layers.
• We then took a bitThe smallest unit of information. It is a shortened form of "binary digit." Since it's binary, it can have only two values -- typically 0 and 1. of a sidestep to look at two different IoT agriculture projects: SoilCares and the Hands-Free Hectare.
• We looked at one editor’s frustrations with requirements to connect to the cloud.
• We addressed smart-home hubs – and whether or not you need one.
• We then took a trip down the notion of abstraction, seeing how only so many details matter, using a home with a door that needs locking as an example. This took us to the ideas of encapsulation, interfaces, and APIs. After which, we looked further at the application layer and how profiles help different devices to interoperateThis refers to how well different pieces of equipment can work together. Macs and PCs, for instance have some limited interop, but there are many Mac devices that can't work on a PC, and vice versa. This is an important notion for systems, like the IoT, that involve many different pieces of equipment working together., using a radon gas detector and fan as an example.
• Finally, with all of that background in place, we were ready to look both at the way the Big 3 IoT guys approach the market (Amazon and Google with speaker-based systemsThis is a very generic term for any collection of components that, all together, can do something. Systems can be built from subsystems. Examples are your cell phone; your computer; the radio in your car; anything that seems like a "whole."; Apple with a phone-centric one) as well as the US’s larger ISPs.

From here, we’re going to dive down a different technology direction. We’ve looked at many high-level communications concepts, and we’ll come back to more later. But, for now, we’re going to start looking at how sensorsA device that can measure something about its environment. Examples are movement, light, color, moisture, pressure, and many more. and actuatorsA way of controlling some device electronically. It might turn the device on or off or change a setting or property or do any other thing that the device is capable of. work – and the crazy things that can be done to build them.

Stay tuned!