The IoT Academy Blog

IoT is hard and there’s a lot of confusion around it. What is it exactly? Is it something that my business or organization needs to use? What are the use cases? The risks? How do I get started? You’ll learn what IoT means and how you might be able to use it to build a new organization, to launch a new business line within your existing organization, or to simply improve your internal processes and operations. This free 94-page guide book will equip you with a solid foundation in the Internet of Things and its accompanying concepts, components, and the technologies that make it all possible. Here’s what you’ll take away: Part 1: What is IoT When you Google “what is IoT,” many of the answers are very technical. However, most people don’t want to nor need to dive into the nitty-gritty of IoT. This chapter provides you with a simple explanation of the Internet of Things, why it matters, and what it means for you. Part 2: Sensors & Devices Senso...

New technology reacts in real-time to make pedestrians, cyclists and drivers safer and more aware of each other An aspect of life that is taught to children from an early age, crossing the road safely is something everyone has to do on a daily basis. Although lesson learnt as a child will always be useful, new technology created by insurer Direct Line and built by urban design specialists Umbrellium hopes to encapsulate drivers into the safe crossing experience. The Starling Crossing – or Stigmergic Adaptive Responsive Learning Crossing – uses familiar and understandable road markings and colours to react to different conditions in realtime. The crossing is able to modify the patterns, layout, configuration, size and orientation of pedestrian crossings in order to prioritise pedestrian safety. The entire road surface at the crossing area is monitored by cameras and embedded with computer-controlled LEDs that can be seen from all angles during both day an...

A German startup has devised an Internet of Things green space that is monitored electronically and removes pollution from the urban environment. We have already seen modular plant pots that create vertical home gardens, and a plant wall that can purify indoor air. Now, a German company is taking things a step further with an innovation they hope will be an answer to creating low-cost, low-maintenance outdoor urban greenscapes. The company has developed a freestanding plant filter, the CityTree, that can clean the surrounding air of particulate matter while offsetting 240 tons of CO2 equivalents per year. The 12-foot-high unit combines a vertically-installed moss culture with vascular plants for a green wall that can ingest particulate matter, nitrogen dioxide and ozone, and has the same cleansing effect as 275 urban trees but at 5 percent of the cost and just 1 percent of the space. Thanks to solar panels and a fully automated provision of water and nutrients using a buil...

US innovation equips firefighters with real time information to help them respond to emergencies. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab and the US Department of Homeland Security are developing a machine learning system to help feed relevant information and recommendations to firefighting teams in real time. The Assistant for Understanding Data through Reasoning, Extraction and sYnthesis, or AUDREY, is an AI system that gathers data on emergency situations and guides responders, enabling them to better deal with situations. Equipment to help first responders safely and effectively save lives and minimize damage is constantly evolving — such as devices designed to improve navigation in smoke-filled buildings through vibrations or thermal imaging. The new system was designed to be part of the IoT and to coordinate those kinds of wearable technologies. For example, the whereabouts of each responder can be tracked through GPS, and sensors in the uniforms could track the conce...

AudioHound sound recognition software can be used to monitor a car’s mechanical health and environmental surroundings. Car owners who aren’t in tune with their vehicle’s clunks and squeaks will eventually be able to install software that listens to mechanical sound for them. A new start-up OtoSense is developing the AudioHound app, which currently runs in prototype-form on tablets but the company hopes to license to car manufacturers with a means of building it into the car’s internal technology. The idea is that it will be able to hear every distinct sound a car makes, from engine revs to clutch shifts, and will know if something’s not right. Often getting defective parts fixed early can be much cheaper (and safer) for the customer, plus the software is said to be so advanced it can even detect general wear and tear over time by tiny subtle audio changes. The other main use for AudioHound is listening to what’s going on outside the vehicle. Microph...

View's windows tint automatically according to the weather conditions and can be controlled by a smartphone app. Window glare is something that have been solved for decades with simple blinds, but now a glass company is making windows smarter and more energy efficient, bringing in auto-tinting that can be controlled by a mobile phone. View's Dynamic Glass offers connected windows that can be programmed to darken or brighten depending on outdoor conditions, and prevent glare in doing so.  The system tracks the location of the sun using a sensor, and gathers information on light conditions from the internet. View offers a smartphone app that connects to the window's IP address, connecting them to the network of IoTs and enabling them to be controlled independently. The tint is controlled by a very low electrical current that allows it to change the pattern of electrons to make the windows appear clear or opaque. View says their technology, by helpin...

Poland-based firm has created an intelligent waste bin capable of separating recyclables on site, as well as storing data in the cloud.  While we’ve seen plenty of innovations looking at creative ways to repurpose waste plastic (as fine kitchenware, for instance), there’s also a movement towards creatively increasing the amount of successful recycling that takes place, such as this gamified waste disposal campaign in a Dutch campus, and now here’s a bin that does the recycling for users. Poland based Bin-e has developed a futility automated garbage bin that’s small enough to fit discreetly into office spaces. Bin-e was borne out of the realization that office employees, though well intentioned, are often confused by segregated recycling recepticles, placing objects in the wrong units, resulting in both increased garbage (due to contamination) and/or increased labor costs of sorting. While details of exactly how Bin-e will process different items remain elusive, u...

The Crosswalk app gives less-able pedestrians more time to cross the road safely Launched in April this year, Crosswalk is an app that gives pedestrians with restricted mobility more time to cross the road. Currently the system is being trialled with 10 subjects in the Dutch city of Tilburg. The adapted traffic lights house a sensor that scans the pavements on both sides of the road. If it locates someone using the Crosswalk app then it automatically adjusts the time that the lights remain green. The app has four varied time settings, and the light's sensor will pick the one suitable for the pedestrian's level of mobility to ensure that they have more than enough time to cross the road, but also that it doesn't overly delay the traffic. The system is the brainchild of Dutch company, Dynniq. Known for their work in intelligent traffic systems, they say the app works with both GPS and the software that's already installed in the traffic light, meaning that th...

According to research group Gartner, by 2020 there will be more than 26 billion connected devices in use by businesses and individuals. With such a proliferation of devices, there will be tremendous opportunity, but also tremendous challenges. Many of these challenges involve security. In 2013, hackers used internet-enabled heating, ventilation and air-conditioning systems set up in Target stores to steal 40 million credit card numbers from the U.S. retailer, and many companies have not improved their IoT security in the years since. The 2016 Mirai attack used IoT devices to cause Internet shutdowns across Europe and North America, resulting in an estimated USD 110 million in economic damage. Securing multiple points of vulnerability is a major challenge for organisations and requires a comprehensive, end-to-end approach. Such approaches are difficult to develop, however, most hackers concentrate on breaching one specific element within the technology stack while system opera...

Amazon Echo. FitBit. Even your coffee pot. While you might be thinking “one of these things is not like the other,” they are all examples of the Internet of Things (IoT). They are all everyday objects that can be connected to the internet and be recognized by other devices and contribute info to a database. The Internet of Things describes Internet V.2, where data is created by things. Kevin Ashton, digital innovation expert who is credited with coining the term, defines the Internet of Things in this quote: “If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things—using data they gathered without any help from us—we would be able to track and count everything, and greatly reduce waste, loss and cost. We would know when things needed replacing, repairing or recalling, and whether they were fresh or past their best.” Now that the Internet of Things has made the physical world one enormous information system, how will the Internet of Thing...

We are humans and the industries are bound to spend their time and resources for fulfilling the human needs in order to earn huge profits. Basically, humans are bound to fulfil their basic needs i.e Food, Clothing and Shelter. For fulfilling those needs, they search for an Entity who can act as a mediator for fulfilling our basic needs. And that is the “Industry”. An Industry is basically an Intermediate Unit between our needs and us. Let's think about a scenario if you need to travel to hundreds of kilometres just for arranging the Food Items for your family and its very complicated for us. Here comes the role of this Industry, it performs such tasks like travelling to large distances, arranging raw material and providing finished products to the community and many more. Due to this huge requirement and regular expansion towards the industry, we need our industries to be more organized and continuously connected to us. Even industries require more technologies which ma...