Funny. The other day I was wondering what ever happened to iot and all the hype. Then I realized that it is here and so ubiquitous that I stopped thinking about iot at all. Been in a Best Buy lately? Looked at Amazon's product line recently? There is WiFi and Bluetooth in almost everything now. And lots of people have dozens of devices in their homes from doorbells, scales, blood pressure monitors, speakers, coffee machines, door sensors, flood and freeze sensors and oh so many cameras. People love this stuff and it's not going away any time soon. If it was cheap enough, they'd put a screen on every last can of coke and show you personalized ads.
it's weird seeing IoT as if that was all hype then died off - I literally have 30 or so devices in my home that are Wifi connected (lights, smart speakers...). Like a lot of other hyped technologies it was in the news initially, didn't come as fast as commenters thought, then slowly built up to actually fulfill it's promise. Autonomous driving likely the same
I think people just stopped using the buzzword IoT/Internet of Things even though there are many more devices in use now than before. Just a few years ago Amazon echo was just a curiosity, and now connected speakers are everywhere. I have 70+ smart switches and outlets in my house, and even my hot tub has internet connected sensors measuring water quality. Nearly all of my neighbors have a smart doorbell, internet camera, or smart lock. And these are just the obvious examples. Self driving cars are loaded with sensors that send data back to the mothership all day long. I'm not sure of the dollar amount to put on all of that, but IoT is alive and kicking.
Right now it's pretty much what it does. Small little things that takes 2 seconds without it. And it's less reliable. I've yet to witness a revolutionary use of IoT.
IoT reminds me of the fiber optics craze of the late 90s. No one knew what the killer application for fiber was back then but every company was in it. Eerily similar to whats going on now with IoT.
Did IoT really fizzle out though? In my mind it just became more mainstream expected. Yes, silly things like connected refrigerators / toasters / whatever were a gimmick but the watch I'm wearing, the earphones I'm wearing, the scale on my bathroom floor, the blood pressure cuff under my sink – so many of the things I use each day are now connected (sometimes indirectly) to the Internet and it really is just "normal."
(I do think the 3D printing craze was premature given the state of the tech then and now. I did just see a video of 3D printed full-size boat though so who knows...)
Yes! I'm still excited by the IoT because I've turned both a dumb air conditioner and a dumb body scale into "IoT" items that never send their data outside of my network. I just think it is much more niche then people thought.
I really hope we'll look back at this fad of android powered wifi domestic IoT devices one day and laugh about how silly it all was.
Not an IoT hater. I've worked for IoT companies, and there's a lot of very smart embedded engineers doing very cool things in the space. But an old android tablet installed in the wall with a WiFI point? oh dear.
Exactly, it's still very much active and widely investigated, thrown money at. Large companies are developing and testing out their own IoT solutions behind closed doors. Just recently saw an invite from some university study group trying to get their project funded. They were looking into IoT for farming and hospitals. This segment is definitely growing, maybe not very public at the moment, but it's going to be soon.
Or, the IoT market is massively over-hyped. Umm... smart cities, smart cars (used to be called embedded), buh wearables ... $267bn market no way. Security nightmare, drone stalkers, fridge attacks owner etc. (OK exaggerating.)
There will be some cool stuff, sure. But IoT won't take over the world. Will eat my hat in 2020 if I'm wrong of course.
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