The author of this story is Avner Goren, general manager for strategic marketing for TI embedded processing.
The Internet of Things (IoT) fascinates me because of its possibilities and potential to change our lives. It also fascinates me because I think we have come to a tipping point where IoT will soon touch every part of our world.
Many issues have kept IoT from becoming truly a part of our day like smartphones and the Internet. We need to understand that for IoT to reach its full potential, most of the “things” we will need to connect will be small, low-cost and most important – battery operated. Until recently, the IoT technology for these mass markets used connected sensors (like connecting every sprinkler in a large irrigation system or every lamp in a home) that are simply too expensive for most uses. Then, there were issues with battery life (some of these devices require 10-15 years of life on a single charge of a battery), what standards will be used (i.e. Bluetooth® vs. Wi-Fi vs. Ethernet) and protocols (how IoT connected devices speak to the cloud). But by far the biggest challenge keeping IoT from being everywhere is simplicity.
Let’s say a company wants to connect a washing machine or a piece of automated equipment in a factory or a car to the cloud. For our customers, using IoT devices up until now meant they would need to have engineers on staff with an incredible amount of expertise to understand the hardware, system and networking software, framework as well as how to connect and communicate with the cloud. Making all of this simple, and in one end-to-end package, will enable massive deployment.
Our goal with our latest generation of IoT products is to put all of the complexity into a simple, easy to use device where a customer can take it, plug it in and in just minutes have an IoT-enabled device connected to the cloud. To make it as simple as this, we are encapsulating all the networking hardware and software in one package. Beyond that, we continue to expand our TI Designs with numerous reference designs while TI E2E forums offer a wealth of IoT knowledge and our IoT web page (www.ti.com/iot) provides great access to all of our IoT-related products.
We also have a lot of options in the low-power arena where batteries can now last the entire life of the product, and in some cases, use our energy harvesting technology so the device never runs out of battery. We can support 14 different wireless standards such as Bluetooth, Bluetooth low energy, Wi-Fi, ZigBee and 6LoWPAN to name a few.
But we are going one step further in making IoT deployment even easier. We’ve collaborated with eight different cloud service providers to offer the cloud infrastructure, tools and applications needed for easy integration of a complete end-to-end IoT. This is our IoT cloud ecosystem.
It is because of this simplicity that IoT will finally reach, and pass, the tipping point. We’re already seeing IoT in the consumer electronics world, particularly with wearable fitness devices. I believe home automation is not far behind as the demand for connected living spaces continue to grow. I think it will take time to see a truly connected industrial and automotive world, but I also believe these sectors have the greatest potential for IoT growth because there are billions of automated machines, industrial sensors and parts of vehicles that could benefit from IoT technology.
Much like it is hard for our children to believe we didn’t always have smartphones and the Internet, the next generation won’t be able to imagine a world where everything wasn’t connected to the cloud. That’s why IoT fascinates me so much – the potential of what lies ahead.
To learn more about IoT Week check out our other blog posts on ConnecTIng Wirelessly and Behind the Wheel.