80 GlobeAsia March 2014

Technology

he Internet of Things (IoT) phrase is quite a buzzword these days and its definition will vary widely depending on who

you ask. The main concept, however, is that devices and appliances that would traditionally function independently are able to communicate with other data sources or devices to enhance their own functionality and efficiency.

While this sounds great in theory, the fact is that there is a war brewing. Competing manufacturers determined

to make their products the standard have led to a crowded marketplace with multiple smart products that are unable to communicate with each other. This market fragmentation forces custom-ers into purchasing products within a certain product line or manufacturer to stave off interoperability issues. In the end everybody loses.

Why it’s revolutionaryBefore we delve too much into the controversy it’s a good idea to learn what’s at stake. Since Google’s acquisi-

tion of Nest last month for $3.2 billion, it seems like IoT is on the lips of every tech blogger and industry insider. The hype is not undeserved. Once devices start to communicate with each other a remarkable thing happens; they get smarter and become greater than the sum of their parts. The IoT movement could well impact every aspect of the way we live, work and play in the future and the revolution is not tomorrow, it is happening today.

Imagine workplace sensors that detect defective components and auto- id

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Can the Internet of Things survive the coming war?

March 2014 GlobeAsia 81

By Jason Fernandes

matically order replacements from the 3D printer downstairs. Imagine sensors embedded in soil that allow your plants to actually turn on the sprinklers in your garden when the moisture read-ings are low. The potential is practically limitless and as these products learn to integrate better, we will soon begin to see a real improvement in our lives.

According to IDC, the potential market for IoT technologies could hit $9 trillion as soon as 2020. A General Electric study claims that the IoT mar-ket could add as much as $15 trillion to global GDP, an amount they describe as approximately “...the size of today’s US economy.” The biggest problem with this rosy outlook is the lack of specificity regarding what exactly “the internet of things” really is. The devil is in the details they say and that remains true here.

A lack of standardsThe concept of IoT involves devices communicating and sometimes con-trolling other devices without human interaction, but that’s about as far as anybody has got to a consensus. The definition of IoT could include, for example, a refrigerator that utilizes a built-in Android app and processor to automatically re-order supplies when they get depleted or notify owners of food expiry dates.

On the other hand the definition would also include gadgets like the Bel-kin WeMo or Phillips Hue that feature a built-in Wi-Fi chip for communica-tion with the internet. Anybody with a rudimentary understanding of tech can tell you that while these both fall under the definition of IoT; the fridge is much ‘smarter’ and capable of conducting much more complex operations in re-sponse to data then the WeMo.

The same is true for the Nest, which features a built in Wi-Fi chip that puts the device directly online, but is capa-

Once devices start to communicate with each other a remarkable thing happens; they get smarter and become greater than the sum of their parts.

ble of limited processing outside of the cloud. Still other IoT devices amount to little more than sensors that require a higher-level device like a tablet or smartphone to actually transmit data to the internet before they can be classi-fied (even loosely) as IoT devices.

That two components with such widely varying capabilities could ever be lumped in the same category betrays the major issue that lack of consensus has wrought and that is a correspond-ing lack of standards. Manufacturers are stymied because it’s not possible to design hardware standards that would function equally well for devices that vary so widely in capability.

This has led to manufacturers creat-ing their own proprietary standards. To make things even more compli-cated, some IoT devices from the same manufacturers are incompatible even with each other. As Mike Elgin put it in a recent Computer World article, “It seems to me that the so-called ‘Internet of Things’ will be littered with multiple, warring, incompatible standards, pro-tocols and systems for connectivity...”

Christopher Mims of Quartz la-mented that IoT has “...yet to find its HTML.” These critics are not alone. Their concerns are shared by others in the industry who wish that everybody would agree on a certain standard and stick to it.

Both Bluetooth 4.0 Low Energy and NFC have been bandied about as possible options, particularly because of their efficiency. Quite a few devices have begun to use Bluetooth LE with great success since its power consump-tion is minimal. NFC on the other hand, while cheaper, has very limited programming possibilities and requires a very close range to function. Both these options are imperfect, however, and there are only so many existing wireless standards to choose from.

The CEO of Wi-Fi Alliance has predictably argued that IoT devices should just use the existing Wi-Fi stan-dard and he has a point. Consumers are comfortable with Wi-Fi, most have Wi-Fi access and this would likely be the path of least resistance. Further, it almost seems like a no-brainer when you consider that this is the only way Bluetooth LE or NFC devices can even communicate with each other

The biggest hole in the Wi-Fi ap-proach is cost and efficiency. Many of these IoT devices amount to nothing more than sensors communicating via Bluetooth or NFC with smarter devices that know what to do with the informa-tion. These more rudimentary systems would needlessly balloon in cost if they were forced to communicate via Wi-Fi. This is also an incredibly inefficient solution since these devices would have little or no use for the massive band-width that Wi-Fi provides.

Another serious potential problem is power drain. When one considers that the home of the future could have well over 100 IoT devices, this could all add up to a fair amount of cumulative power drain and a great deal of band-width wastage. These factors become especially relevant when you consider that the agreed-upon standard would likely trickle down to thousands of products.

A few years ago, Qualcomm tried

82 GlobeAsia March 2014

Technology

to address this problem with the Allseen Alli-ance, based on its own technology. The product of this alliance, Qualcomm’s AllJoin, is a step in the right direction because it is able to automati-cally pair with multiple smart devices regardless of the protocol they are functioning on. The device automatically negotiates an appropriate connection based on the signal it detects.

This is definitely a step in the right direction but is it truly necessary? Wouldn’t it be great if we could plug these devices directly into an ex-isting mesh-like web that already has well-estab-lished standards, protocols and infrastructure? We already have such a network and it’s called the internet. Qualcomm’s AllJoin amounts to a hardware solution to a problem that can be solved much more efficiently through software coupled with the power of the internet.

A software solutionPeople like Elgin and other commentators calling for standards are missing the point be-cause it really does not matter if these devices can communicate with each other directly. It’s enough that they can each communicate with the internet. There is no reason why software cannot be the bridge between these systems. Indeed, there are a handful of companies at-tempting to build just such a software-based IoT standard.

Companies like SmartThings and Things-Speak hope to be the online brain that powers future IoT devices. These software standards are intriguing but even more interesting are online services like IFTTT.com that let you create con-nections between web content ‘channels’ like Twitter or Google Drive, and physical devices like the Belkin Wemo and Phillip Hue, who have incidentally recently introduced IFTTT channels.

Since IFTTT core focus is content-based web services like Facebook, Flickr and the like, one can use IFTTT as a sort of 21st century Rosetta Stone, translating between various web services and hardware devices that would oth-erwise have no means at all to communicate. A link between hardware and software will allow you to constantly enhance your hardware’s func-tionality by allowing it to exchange information with external data sources.

Further opening up possibilities is the recent

introduction of a SmartThings channel as well. Since SmartThings could soon power any num-ber of smart devices, their channel on IFTTT will make it possible for SmartThings to com-municate with web and social media services as well as other competing hardware standards like WeMo and Hue.

The internet’s greatest strength thus far has been connecting people from vastly different cultures, facilitating communication and being a bridge between different peoples. There is no reason why the internet cannot also play such a role for devices as well, translating between vari-ous standards.

Given the exponential growth of the IoT phenomenon we could soon see a vastly greater number of devices connected to the internet than actual people. Perhaps the true potential of the internet has finally been unlocked not as a network of people, but one of connected devices working together diligently to forever change our lives.

Jason Fernandes is a tech commentator and the

founder of SmartKlock.

The internet’s greatest strength thus far has been connecting people from vastly different cultures, facilitating communication and being a bridge between different peoples. There is no reason why the internet cannot also play such a role for devices as well.

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