What is IOT?

I entered the bungalow through the back gate, and walked towards the swimming pool. Paul, our client was sitting there beside a massive plastic bucket with a plastic tube sticking out and reaching a height of almost 2 meters.

“What is that?” I asked Paul.

“It’s an aeroponic vertical farming system,” he replied.

****There was a lot more banter about aeroponic farming systems and what he was growing. But since this post is about IOT, we will skip all that irrelevant talk****

“So what do you expect out of our company?” I asked him.

“I want to IOT the system!”

“You want to what?” I asked him again hoping he would clarify.

“You know, connect this farming system to the internet and stuff….”

Paul’s requirement was legitimate, which was that he wanted to monitor certain key parameters in his aeroponic farming system remotely and at all times, because the plants he was growing were very sensitive to changes in their environment. Some of the parameters he wanted to monitor were air temperature, humidity, water electrical conductivity among others. Any sudden and unexpected change in these parameters could prove fatal for the plants and render his system useless. Thus, his need to “IOT the system”.

However, his language, and use of technical jargon such as IOT in the wrong context made me realize that he didn’t really know what “IOTing a system” meant. And he will not be alone. A lot of business owners and clients I had talked to were baffled with what the term “IOT” meant. So here is a brief introduction to what it means from my perspective. A disclaimer before I start – IOT has many meanings according to many people and sources. The following explanation is the one that made sense to me and that I used while creating relevant IOT products.

What is IOT?

IOT, an acronym for Internet Of Things, is basically a concept in which previously offline devices (also called things) are connected to a network. Let’s break this statement down.

What does the word ‘things’mean?

‘Things’ can mean any offline device around you. It can be your table, chair, the door, the window, a flower pot, a water bottle, anything that was previously offline. How do you ‘IOTize’ the thing? You can either add sensors to it, or actuators, or both. A sensor senses a physical characteristic around the thing such as air temperature or air pressure. An actuator carries out a physical action such as increasing the current in a wire or toggling valves. What to add to the ‘thing’ and what to monitor will be dictated by the client requirements. This process is also commonly called making the ‘thing’ smart. So when you hear phrases like ‘A SMART bag’ or ‘A SMART lightbulb’, it means that either sensors or actuators or both have been added to the ‘thing’ in order to be able to monitor and/or control it remotely.

What does the word ‘network’ mean in this context?

Before we delve into what the word ‘network’ means, there is some commonly-used terminology associated with networks in IoT:

Node: The ‘thing’ or the end/edge device. This device is the one that was previously unconnected to the network that is now connected

Gateway: The central node in a network to which all other nodes are connected. Presence of a gateway is not necessary. If present, the gateway might be connected to the internet if the client wants the nodes’ data to be visible remotely

Mesh: A form of network topology in which nodes are connected to each other, forming a web or a mesh of sorts

There are several possible network configurations available to connect the nodes to each other. Some of them are shown in the diagram below.

Source: https://engineering.eckovation.com/what-are-network-topology-in-iot/

In a ‘Ring’ network, individual nodes are connected to adjacent nodes and there is no gateway. A ‘Ring’ network is a local network. Whereas in a ‘Star’ network, the nodes are centrally connected to a gateway that might/might not be connected to the internet. Some networks can even be ‘Hierarchical’ in nature. Though, an increasingly common type of network is a ‘Mesh’ network, in which a node is connected to all the other nodes in a network. If the network owner wants the network to be exposed publicly, they might decide to install a gateway and connect the local mesh network to the internet. Otherwise they might prefer to keep the mesh local.

When does one type of network make sense over another type of network? That depends on the client requirements such as:

• Project Budget

• Transmission technology

• Service-level uptime guarantee

• Distance between nodes

• Speed of data monitoring

Among many other client requirements. After a thorough evaluation of all the requirements, the solution-architect would create the network out of the nodes and gateway so that data from individual nodes can reach the client. In case the client would want to control the nodes remotely, the architect would also add actuators to the nodes.

But, I feel that I’m digressing. The entire process from studying client requirements to building the perfect network is a long and arduous process, involving a lot of technical details and several sub-topics such as network addressing and routing. The write-up above was meant to introduce Paul and the topic of “IoT” in about 3 minutes. In the process of providing a high-level summary, I’ve omitted a lot of technical aspects, because explaining all those aspects would take up hours of your time.

“You listening to me?” Paul asked me.

“Yeah, of course! So you want to “IoT” the system?”

“Yeah, I want to make my aeroponic tower smart. How do we begin that process?”

“I first have to understand the entire aeroponics system that you have setup. After I understand this system, I can suggest the sensors and actuators that you need to add to make it smart.”

“That sounds fair. Come inside the house,” he said.

How does an aeroponics farming system work and what exactly is the process of adding smartness to such a system?

Stay Tuned to find out!