What is the Internet of Things?

Since the beginnings of the Digital Revolution in the 1950s, a wide range of revolutionary technologies have been created. Despite initially being restricted to just a few individuals, the sector has developed rapidly and most new technologies have become increasingly widespread and accessible.

The emergence of various types of innovative devices (such as RFID chips, sensors and the Internet) and their greater accessibility ended up generating the concept of the Internet of Things or Internet of Things (IoT). IoT technology marks a significant change in the Computer Age that now allows not only computers to be connected via the Internet.

The history of IoT

The first known use of IoT was at MIT, where college students used inexpensive sensors to monitor and refill their soda machine. More progress toward IoT was made around 1994, when a magazine article by Reza Raji proposed the idea of ​​moving data packets to automate homes and factories.

Around the 1990s, Microsoft along with several other companies began experimenting with similar ideas, and starting in 2002, many media outlets began discussing IoT advances - such as the use of smart devices connected to each other and simultaneously connected to a monitoring information system. However, 2008 is considered by many to be the official birth year of the IoT industry, when there were already more electronic devices connected to the Internet than people.

How does IoT work?

IoT technology is basically the interconnection of various devices and physical objects and generally consists of a network of sensors and non-computing devices that communicate with computers or devices over the Internet. This may include the use of thermostats, heart rate monitors, sprinklers, and home security systems. IoT technology innovations enable remote monitoring, control, automation and status checking of a wide range of devices and sensors, which can be used in smart homes and self-driving cars.

IoT for personal and home use

IoT technology can be deployed in many different ways for personal and home use. Some common examples are related to the concept of home automation, where various devices can be used to monitor and control the use of lights, air conditioners, heaters and even security systems. These devices can also be connected to other personal items such as smart watches and smartphones, or also to smart hubs that are designed to connect different smart home products (such as Smart TVs and refrigerators).

Automated homes also have the potential to significantly improve the quality of life for seniors and people with disabilities by providing assistive technology for them - especially for people with vision, hearing or mobility limitations. This may include the use of real-time sensors that notify family members when abnormal heart rate variations occur or when the elderly person has a fall. Another interesting example is the use of smart beds to detect whether the bed is occupied or not. This technology is already being tested by some hospitals to track when patients leave their beds.

IoT for commercial and industrial use

Some industrial use cases may include the use of sensors to monitor environmental conditions such as temperature, humidity, pressure and air quality. IoT devices can also be used by farmers to track when livestock are running out of water or food, or by manufacturers to be aware when a product is about to run out. They can even set up automatic machines to order product replenishment when supplies fall below a set limit.

Limitations

The Internet of Things brings many interesting innovations and is certainly here to stay. As far as their limitations are concerned, however, one problem with using IoT systems for businesses and homes is the significant increase in the number of devices required to be monitored and connected (and many of these may depend on an Internet connection). If the implementation is not adequate enough, businesses and homeowners may have to access several different applications to monitor their various devices. This would make IoT much less practical and attractive to potential customers.

For this reason, some companies such as Apple and Lenovo have created applications that allow devices to be controlled in the iOS environment, even using voice commands. Other IoT devices work around hubs that are independent of Internet or WiFi access. Examples of this are Amazon's Echo and Samsung's SmartThings Hub. Thus, IoT works through devices connected to a sensor, which is usually connected to the Internet itself or another WiFi receiver, allowing central control, programming and monitoring.

Cryptocurrencies and the Internet of Things

Many IoT systems will likely rely on financial micro-transactions between digital objects and this will require IoT devices to be connected in a way that enables the so-called machine-to-machine (M2M) economy - which is basically the exchange of money between non-human devices . In such a context, there is a growing demand for IoT-compatible currencies and cryptocurrencies are certainly a viable alternative.

At first, many believed that the blockchain itself would be the basic framework for the M2M economy, as it is suitable for micropayments and is widely used with cryptocurrencies. However, many blockchain networks have limited performance in terms of the number of transactions per second they can handle. This means that most Proof of Work and Proof of Stake implementations of blockchain networks currently have limited scalability potential, making them unsuitable for processing large-scale M2M microtransactions. However, it is worth mentioning that many blockchain projects are working towards scalability solutions, such as the Bitcoin Lightning Network and Ethereum Plasma.

IOTA Internet of Things Application

IOTA (Internet of Things Application) is a project that is heavily focused on IoT solutions and aims to be the backbone of the emerging M2M economy. It is an open source protocol for a distributed database (distributed ledger) that, unlike Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies, does not depend on miners to verify transactions. IOTA is not based on a blockchain network, but on a flow of interconnected transactions, which they call a tangle (tangle).

The tangle consists of a network in which transactions can be verified directly by users who request them, as long as they carry out two other transactions previously. The limit of transactions per second that can be processed is directly related to the number of users on the network.

IOTA is a highly experimental and complex cryptocurrency and is the only one that uses the tangle architecture. Many technical problems have been reported and the tangle structure has yet to prove its efficiency. Still, the project brought some innovative and interesting concepts and if developers can overcome the limitations, they could be suitable for the IoT and M2M economy.

Final considerations

The Internet of Things (IoT) will enable the automation, supervision and control of devices on a large scale, which will certainly improve our daily lives and increase the efficiency of various industries. There is a good chance that cryptocurrencies will be part of the IoT revolution, serving as digital money for microtransactions and the M2M economy. Currently, there are a limited number of cryptocurrency projects targeting the IoT sector but we will likely see many more being created in the near future as the technology continues to advance at a rapid pace.