What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?

Summary

In this video, Gary Sims from Android Authority explores the Internet of Things (IoT), a global network that extends beyond human communication to interconnected devices, or 'things,' equipped with sensors. These devices collect and transmit data, leading to smarter homes and cities. Gary discusses the challenges of IoT, including technological hurdles, big data processing, and security concerns. He highlights Samsung's ambitious plan for IoT-enabled products and ARM's mbed OS, designed for low-power IoT devices. The video also touches on M2M communication and the potential of IoT in large-scale projects, emphasizing the transformative yet complex nature of this technology.

Takeaways

• 🌐 The Internet of Things (IoT) is a global network that extends the internet's reach beyond people and computers to everyday objects equipped with sensors.
• 📱 IoT devices, like smart thermostats and traffic monitors, collect data and transmit it to the cloud for analysis and decision-making.
• 🚀 IoT is poised to transform personal and professional lives, with more 'things' potentially outnumbering people on the internet.
• 🛠️ Technological challenges in IoT include hardware and software issues such as battery life, maintenance, interoperability, and compatibility.
• 🔒 Security and privacy are significant concerns as IoT devices can be vulnerable to hacking, as demonstrated by incidents involving webcams and baby monitors.
• 💡 Samsung has ambitious plans for IoT, aiming for all its products to be IoT-enabled within five years, with 90% connectivity by 2017.
• 📊 Big data is a critical component of IoT, requiring robust systems to process vast amounts of data for meaningful insights and actions.
• 🏗️ Smart cities and large-scale IoT projects hold significant potential for efficiency and cost savings but also present complex implementation challenges.
• 🛠️ ARM's mbed OS is a free operating system designed to facilitate the development of IoT devices, supporting various communication protocols and low power operations.
• 🔄 IoT's structure typically involves sensors transmitting data to a gateway device, which then sends it to the cloud for further processing and control.
• 🌟 The future of IoT is expected to bring seamless experiences and significant innovation, with potential for both consumer and large-scale industrial applications.

Q & A

What is the Internet of Things (IoT)?

The Internet of Things refers to the network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items embedded with sensors, software, and network connectivity that enables these objects to collect and exchange data.

What are the three major actors that make up the internet as traditionally understood?

The three major actors traditionally making up the internet are people, client devices they use, and servers.

What is a 'thing' in the context of the Internet of Things?

In the context of IoT, a 'thing' is any object that has a sensor attached to it, capable of transmitting data from that sensor into the internet or the cloud for analysis and decision-making.

What are some examples of sensors used in IoT devices?

Examples of sensors in IoT devices include temperature sensors, traffic sensors, flow rate sensors, and energy usage monitors.

How does the data from IoT devices typically flow?

Data from IoT devices typically flows from the sensors to more complex devices or IoT gateways, then to the cloud, where it can be analyzed and used for decision-making.

What are the challenges faced by the IoT ecosystem?

Challenges faced by IoT include technological issues like hardware and software limitations, big data concerns, security and privacy issues, and the need for seamless consumer experiences.

What did Samsung's co-CEO announce regarding IoT at CES 2015?

Samsung's co-CEO announced that all Samsung products would be Internet of Things enabled within 5 years, with 90% of their products expected to connect to the web by 2017.

What is mbed OS and why is it significant for IoT devices?

mbed OS is a free operating system designed for ARM's Cortex M range of microcontrollers, supporting various IoT protocols. It's significant for IoT devices because it's designed to be low power, event-driven, and suitable for devices with limited resources.

What is an IoT Gateway and why is it important?

An IoT Gateway is a dedicated device that acts as a bridge between IoT devices and the internet, often handling data transmission and processing before sending it to the cloud. It's important because many sensors do not have direct internet connections and rely on the gateway for connectivity.

What are the security concerns associated with the growth of IoT devices?

Security concerns with IoT devices include the potential for hacking and unauthorized access, as demonstrated by incidents involving webcams and baby monitors being compromised.

What is M2M communication in the context of IoT?

M2M communication in IoT refers to the interaction between connected devices and the cloud, including how these devices are managed and the protocols used for data transmission and device management.

How does IoT potentially impact larger scale projects like smart cities?

IoT can transform larger scale projects by enabling smart buildings, smart cities, and IoT-enabled businesses, leading to improved efficiency, cost savings, and innovative solutions for various infrastructure and business processes.

Outlines

00:00

🌐 Introduction to the Internet of Things

Gary Sims from Android Authority introduces the concept of the Internet of Things (IoT), explaining how it extends the traditional internet by incorporating 'things'—objects equipped with sensors—that can transmit data. These devices range from smart thermostats to traffic monitors and contribute to the massive flow of data across the internet. The IoT is poised to surpass traditional internet users in terms of data transmission. Challenges such as technological issues, big data processing, security, and privacy are highlighted as areas that need addressing for the IoT to evolve effectively. Gary also discusses the impact of IoT on personal and professional lives and mentions Samsung's ambitious plan to enable IoT on all its products within five years, emphasizing the need for a seamless consumer experience.

05:00

🛠️ The Technical Aspects of IoT Devices

This paragraph delves into the technical differences between typical internet devices like smartphones and IoT devices. IoT devices are characterized by their low processing power, limited memory, and storage capabilities, necessitating specialized operating systems like mbed OS. The paragraph contrasts multitasking operating systems, real-time operating systems, bare metal approaches, and low power operating systems, explaining why the latter is ideal for IoT. It also describes the structure of IoT, starting from sensors to gateways and the cloud, and touches on the role of IoT gateways in facilitating data transmission. The security risks associated with IoT devices are also discussed, with examples of hacked webcams and baby monitors, emphasizing the need for robust security measures.

10:02

🏭 The Broader Implications of IoT

The final paragraph discusses the broader implications of IoT, focusing on Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication, which is central to how IoT devices interact with the cloud and each other. It highlights the potential of IoT in large-scale projects like smart buildings and cities, where significant contracts and infrastructure improvements can be realized. The paragraph also addresses the business opportunities and challenges of implementing IoT, including the high initial investment and the long-term benefits. Gary concludes by expressing optimism about the future of IoT, predicting advancements and innovations that will shape the seamless IoT experience.

Keywords

💡Internet of Things (IoT)

The Internet of Things refers to the network of physical devices, vehicles, home appliances, and other items embedded with sensors, software, and network connectivity that enables these objects to collect and exchange data. In the video, IoT is presented as a transformative technology that will change the way we interact with our environment by connecting everyday objects to the internet, allowing them to send and receive data. Examples given include smart thermostats and traffic monitors.

💡Sensors

Sensors are devices that detect and respond to some type of input from the external environment. In the context of IoT, sensors are integral as they collect data from the physical world that can be transmitted to other devices or systems. The video mentions various types of sensors like temperature sensors, traffic sensors, and flow rate sensors, which are used to monitor and control different aspects of our environment.

💡Cloud

The cloud, in the context of IoT, refers to the remote servers that are used to store, manage, and process data that is collected by IoT devices. The video explains that data from sensors is sent to the cloud where it can be analyzed and used to make decisions, highlighting the cloud's role in enabling IoT functionality on a large scale.

💡Smart Devices

Smart devices are IoT-enabled objects that can connect to the internet and perform actions based on the data they collect or receive. The video discusses how smart devices like smart thermostats and smart electricity meters can improve efficiency and convenience by automating tasks and responding to environmental changes.

💡Big Data

Big Data refers to the massive volume of structured and unstructured data that is too large and complex to be processed by traditional data management tools. In the video, big data is mentioned as a challenge for IoT as the vast amounts of data generated by IoT devices need to be processed and analyzed to extract meaningful insights.

💡Security and Privacy

Security and privacy are critical concerns in IoT as the connected nature of devices can make them vulnerable to hacking and data breaches. The video script highlights the risks of smart homes and smart cities being hacked, emphasizing the need for robust security measures to protect IoT devices and the sensitive data they handle.

💡IoT Gateway

An IoT Gateway is a device or software that acts as a bridge between IoT devices and the internet or other networks. The video explains that gateways are important because many IoT sensors do not have direct internet connections and rely on gateways to transmit their data to the cloud or other systems.

💡M2M (Machine-to-Machine)

M2M communication in IoT refers to the direct communication between devices without human intervention. The video discusses how M2M is integral to IoT, allowing devices to communicate with each other and with the cloud, enabling automated processes and decision-making.

💡mbed OS

mbed OS is a free, open-source operating system designed for microcontrollers in IoT devices. The video mentions mbed OS as an example of how ARM is supporting the development of IoT devices by providing an operating system that supports various IoT protocols and is optimized for low power usage.

💡Smart Cities

Smart cities are urban areas that use IoT technologies to improve services, efficiency, and sustainability. The video touches on the concept of smart cities, suggesting that IoT can be used to enhance various city systems, such as transportation and infrastructure, to create more efficient and responsive urban environments.

Highlights

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a new category of actors on the internet, referred to as 'things'.

A 'thing' in IoT is any object with a sensor that can transmit data to the internet for analysis and decision-making.

Examples of IoT sensors include temperature sensors, traffic sensors, and energy usage monitors.

IoT devices will soon outnumber people using internet-enabled devices.

IoT will change personal and professional lives, although the extent is not fully understood.

Technological challenges in IoT include hardware and software issues like battery life and interoperability.

Big data issues involve building systems to process the vast amounts of data generated by IoT devices.

Security and privacy are significant concerns with the potential for smart homes and hospitals to be hacked.

Samsung plans to have all its products IoT-enabled within five years, with 90% connected to the web by 2017.

ARM's mbed OS is a free operating system designed to boost the development of IoT devices.

mbed OS supports various IoT protocols and communication stacks, making it suitable for IoT devices.

IoT devices require a low-power operating system due to their limited processing power and memory.

IoT structure involves small devices transmitting data to more complex devices or IoT Gateways.

IoT Gateways act as intermediaries between sensors and the cloud, sending data to servers for analysis.

Security reports have identified IoT as a potential area for security problems due to poor levels of security in connected devices.

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communication is a key aspect of IoT, focusing on how devices interact with the cloud and each other.

Large-scale IoT projects such as smart buildings and smart cities offer significant opportunities for cost savings and efficiency.

The IoT revolution has begun, with advancements expected to bring innovation from unexpected sources.

Transcripts

hello there my name is Gary Sims Android

authority and today I'm going to try and

answer the question what is the Internet

of

[Music]

Things the internet as we know it is

going to change today it's a massive

Global Network that allows people to

communicate with each other we send

emails we send instant messages we use

websites to communicate to share data

and it is the people who drive the

internet the data that we send comes

from client devices like a laptop or a

PC or a tablet or a smartphone and it

goes to some servers and the servers

then transmit that data that information

on further in that sense we can say that

the internet is made up of three major

actors the people the client devices

they use and the

servers but a whole new category of

actor is being added to the internet

they've been unglamorous called things

hence the term internet of things so

what is a thing we really it's any

object that has a sens attached to it

that can transmit the data from that

sensor further up into the internet into

the cloud where it can be analyzed and

used to make

decisions examples of such sensors

include temperature sensors traffic

sensors flow rate sensors energy usage

monitors and so on a temperature sensor

can be placed in a smart thermostat a

smart electricity usage meter can be

wired into a house or a traffic monitor

can be placed into a traffic signal

these things then send data further up

the chain until either a person or a

piece of computer software makes a

decision based on that data it won't be

long and maybe it's already happened but

there will be more things on the

internet sending data around than actual

people using internet enabled

devices the cell phone the internet

email social media and smartphones have

all changed the way we do things both at

a personal level and at a business level

clearly the internet of things will do

the same thing our personal lives and

our professional lives will be affected

how they'll be affected isn't fully yet

understood but for sure it will change

things there are several big challenges

ahead for the embryonic internet of

things there are technological

challenges in terms of the actual

devices that collect and send data these

challenges include both hardware and

software issues like battery life

maintenance interoperability and

compatibility there are big data issues

around Building Systems that can process

all this data and use it to achieve

meaningful tasks there are also security

and privacy problems who wants to have a

smart home that can be hacked nobody

does or we still a smart hospital that

can be breached remotely as we move from

the individual Smart Homes to Smart

cities which have Smart Transport

Systems and smart infrastructure then

all these issues become more complex and

more difficult to solve correctly the

reality of the internet of things from a

consumer point of view took a giant leap

forward this year when Samsung's co-ceo

took took to the stage at CES 2015 to

declare that all Samsung products will

be Internet of Things enabled within 5

years if 2020 sounds like a long way off

to you he also said that 90% of

Samsung's products would be able to

connect to the web by 2017 Samsung's

plans are for every washing machine

every air conditioning unit and every

microwave oven to be iot enabled and 5

years from now every single piece of

Samsung

Hardware will be an iot device whether

it is an air purifier or an

oven in his speech the co-co also

highlighted that the iot experience

needs to be seamless for the

consumer the iot experience has to be

shimless I predict that this journey to

the seamless experience will be quite

bumpy however they're ACC companied like

arm who are trying their best to smooth

out the road as we

go towards the end of 2014 arm announced

a new operating system to boost the

development of iot devices called embed

OS it's a free operating system for arms

cortex M range of microcontrollers one

of the key points about embed OS is that

it supports the important iot protocols

and allows anybody from a hobbyist

developer to a multi-million dollar

Corporation to prototype and develop iot

devices embed OS will include all the

functionality needed to create create an

iot device and to transmit that data to

the cloud it supports a lot of different

communication Stacks including ipv4 IPv6

six lowan Bluetooth Wi-Fi 2G GSM and 3G

the interesting thing about Ed OS is

that it falls into a very special class

of operating system when we think about

a smartphone it comes with an operating

system like Android and Android itself

is built on Linux and Linux is what we

call a multitasking operating system and

the resources in a modern day smartphone

are quite large you've got a quad core

maybe an octacore processor you've got a

GPU you've got 1 gigs 2 gigs 3 gigs of

RAM maybe 8 gigs of internal storage and

so on a typical iot device will have a

processor that runs at just 100 MHz not

1.5 GHz or 2 GHz like a smartphone it'll

only have maybe 4K of memory or 96k of

memory in the biggest case is 256k of

memory and that's very different to

three gigabyt of memory that we see in a

smartphone it only have a tiny bit of

storage maybe 32k 64k of flash storage

that means that Internet of Things

devices need a special type of operating

system so I said there were four types

of operating system the multitasking

operating system is like Android and

like Linux there's another type of

operating system which is called an OS

or a real-time operating system these

are found in very small debet devices

that you get in cars in Planes in

industrial applications and they are

Specialist typee of operating system

that worries about how the schedu works

how things happen in what order they

happen where they happen within a

certain time constraint now that sounds

good for iot but that kind of system can

be quite battery hungry or not very

power efficient another approach is

called the bare metal approach it really

isn't an operating system in itself

basically you have a loop that goes

round round and round and round round

for infinity and you run your code

inside that Loop checking everything and

just doing everything if you've used an

Arduino you'll be familiar with that

kind of idea the problem is that can't

be maintained once the project gets

particularly large it also doesn't allow

for scheduling it doesn't allow for

certain other things as well so it has

its

limitations and that brings us to the

fourth type of operating system which is

a low power operating system an

operating system that's designed just to

conserve power while performing its

functions typically these operator

systems are event driven rather than

using polling always checking to see

what's going on and that's the kind of

category that the mbed OS fits into and

it's very useful for internet of thing

devices so what does the internet of

things look like in terms of its

structure it's quite simple at the thing

end you have a small device which

monitors something a door a window a

heart rate monitor a temperature monitor

whatever these devices transmit that

data to another more complicated device

it could be a smartphone it could be a

control unit of some kind like a smart

thermostat or it could be a dedicated

device that acts as a gateway to the

internet this last category of device is

known as an iot Gateway they are

important because the sensors often

don't have a direct connection to the

internet they probably only have

Bluetooth or some other low power

connectivity like zigby once the iot

Gateway has received the data from the

sensor it can be sent further up into

the cloud

part of arm strategy can be seen with

its embed OS device server while a web

server would accept connections from web

browsers running on PCS or smartphones

the embed OS device server handles

connections from iot devices it uses

open source protocols including HTTP for

data communication and for device

management the embed OS device server

would sit behind an iot Gateway and

would use the gateway to talk to the iot

devices it can also send the collected

data higher up into the cloud imagine

you wanted to control the temperature in

your house your air conditioning unit

will be monitoring the temperature and

either keeping it at a certain level or

it will be programmed to come on at a

set hour this data is collected and sent

up to the cloud via an iot Gateway via a

server for you to monitor via the web or

on your smartphone if you manage to get

out of work early you might want to

switch on the air conditioner in earlier

so that the house is nice and cool when

you arrive you can send that command via

your smartphone and it will be relay

back down the chain to the unit you can

imagine other scenarios about the same

thing to do with traffic control Street

lighting and so on and so on this all

sounds very utopian but of course there

are dangers with all these devices

sending data and receiving commands it

won't be long before the hackers are

drawn in a recent security report from

Intel's macafe lab singled out iot as a

potential area for security problems the

report says that iot rated attacks will

increase due to the predicted fast

growth of the number of connected

devices many of which will unfortunately

have poor levels of security in 2013 at

a white hat security conference it was

demonstrated that you could hack webcams

that were connected to the internet and

the hackers were able to watch what was

going on with the webcams last year

there were several different reports

about baby monitors that had been hacked

and the attackers were watching the

video feed of the babies in their rooms

in extreme cases they were even

screaming at the babies and waking them

up and frightening them last year the

BBC ran a story about a website that was

dedicated just to streaming video feeds

from hacked webcams and baby monitors

this is creepy and quite disturbing but

unfortunately it's the world that we

live

in however moving on another important

concept of the inet things is M2M or

machine to machine at one level M2M is

what it says it is a way for one machine

to talk to another machine however in

this context it means how a connected

device talks to the cloud it also

includes how these devices are managed

M2M isn't new in the sense that we are

all used to one device talking to

another file transfers over bluetooth

app updates over Wi-Fi even emails are

examples of how one machine talks to

another machine to achieve a specific

task however the special thing about M2M

in terms of Internet of Things is that

these connected devices have a a low

power usage B aren't always on or awake

and C are limited in terms of their

resources like processing power and

memory and so

on all this technology sounds great for

the consumer but probably the big money

is to be made on larger scale projects

smart buildings smart cities and iot

enabled businesses are where the large

contracts are to be won whole

infrastructure is enabled for iot or

endtoend business processes using iot at

every step everything from garbage to

electricity from trams to taxes from

Parcels to production lines can be built

to use iot the initial investment will

be high for businesses however the

benefits will lightly save money in the

long

term so the iot revolution has just

started and there's going to be lots of

advancements over the next few years

it's going to be interesting to watch

The Journey until we reach the seamless

iot experience I'm sure along the way

we're going to see some great Innovation

coming from some surprising sources my

name is Gary SS from Android authority

hope you enjoyed this video if you did

please give it a thumbs up also please

use the comments below to tell me what

you think about iot also don't forget to

subscribe to Android Authority's YouTube

channel and as for me I'll see you in my

next video

[Music]

me