A big buzzword right now is the internet of things (IoT). Is it really useful?
Recently I had the opportunity to participate in an IoT class and lab sponsored by Intel and Microsoft. I was able to set up sensors, connect them to a gateway, store the readings in a cloud database, chart both locally and from the cloud, and set up alarms using software on the cloud.
Imagine troubleshooting intermittent process difficulties by...
- Setting up independent sensors to monitor process operation.
- Connecting the sensors to an IoT enabled gateway and storing sensor data in the cloud.
- Analyzing the cloud data for process anomalies and determining the root cause.
- No process modifications are needed. No rewriting control code or burdening existing network data collection.
- Rather than having to set up internal computing and storage resources, you create what you need on the fly.
- Cloud services are charged by time and/or amount of data. It can be less than $1 a day to collect a lot of data and when you have what you need, just stop the service.