How the Internet of Everything Will Change the World…for the Better | Hacker News Reader

How the Internet of Everything Will Change the World…for the Better

blogs.cisco.com

17 pointsharrydoukas6 comments

There is also a more immediate and practical issue. Each connected "thing" (let us assume sensor for the moment) is supplying a state signal about one thing - this needs coordinating in some way to tell you useful things (like some action needs to be taken or there is someone in your house - or better, a particular person is in your house). This requires some form of set-up for each potential scenario.

I am looking to start in with the Eve Alphs Kickstarter project http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ciseco/eve-alpha-raspber... to explore ways for sensors to self organise through software to provide a higher level view of current state that can be interrogated at a much higher level - perhaps be able to deal with a completely new situation.

Have you seen this? http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/08/wireless-sensor-tags-... Low cost ($15 each) RF sensors connect via a separate 'tag hub' device, which in turn is connected to the Internet.

Yes - there are a good number of sensor sets out there and (like this example) quite a few systemic approaches that parley your data through a third party app - but neither approach does it for me at this stage - although something like that may evolve.

I want my set of interconnected things to self organise a data set about the current state [I am not explaining this well]. To explore such a approach then I will need to write software that explores how multiple data items can construct a body of knowledge (is the wrong word but it will do for now) about the state of the whole. Can't do that through someone else's web app.

It sounds like what you want is something like what home automation controllers (and commercial building automation controllers) do. They generally run a 'master' program written in some internal scripting language that consists mainly of a bunch of If,Then blocks. These have access to all the sensor states and outputs; it 'wires up' the logic to give a bunch of sensors some rudimentary intelligence.

E.g.

  if (external_lightSensor is OFF) then

    after 10 minutes, turn on house lights

  endif

  if (front_door_reed_switch is ON AND home_alarm is ON) then

    Send SMS to mobile_phone

    Turn ON siren for 5 minutes

    Turn ON stobe for 20 minutes

  endif

Right now we should focus on what can be created using existing technology (such as amazing battery-powered IP-capable wireless hardware and open source software).

Let the afterworld come up with a suitable acronym for a society-level overview.

For as much as I would be excited to see something like this happen, I can't help but feel like when the acronym precedes the implementation that's a bad sign.

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