English | EN Smart Interoperable Devices (SID) – the future of Internet of Things
Jan 17, 2014
…Internet of Thing (IoT) innovation is everywhere. Almost.
…There are so many IoT devices sold these times, and so many more which are going on the market tomorrow; so many business and personal domains where IoT is going to enhance our current way of living, thinking, having social relationships… It’s a new world opening its doors which promises to change our everyday’s life in the next ten years almost drastically as our life changed when internet came in consumer’s life.
Let’s take a common domain, our home, and just think about all devices everybody has at home:
Bedroom: Alarm clock/radio set, heating system- Bathroom: radio set, heating system
- Kitchen: toaster, fridge, hob, radio set, micro-wave
- Living room: internet box, hi-fi system, smart-tv, home cinema.
- Dining room : Radio set.
- In every room : lights, (roller)blinds
Now let’s imagine, in an everyday’s scenario, if we could just let these existing devices communicate directly with each other’s, without adding more intelligence than they have today:
5:00 AM: As I programmed it, my general heating system starts the bathroom heating system to be at a good temperature at 6:30AM.
6:30 AM: My alarm clock triggers the alarm, and wakes me up. I switch on my radio station (News channel).
6:45 AM: I switch off the radio set as I wake up, and go in the bathroom: the room is at a perfect temperature level. The heating system is already off because the room is at good temperature for the next hour. I switch on the bathroom radio to continue listening to the news.
7:00 AM: End of my shower. I switch off the radio, and go out of the bathroom.
7:15 AM: Breakfast time. My hot coffee is ready (manually programmed yesterday evening). I switch on the radio station in the kitchen to continue listening my radio station on the same News channel.
7:25AM: End of my breakfast. I switch off the radio set before going out of the kitchen. Back in the bathroom for a short break, I have to switch on my bathroom radio and switch off when I go out a few minutes later.
7:45 AM: Leaving my home. Let’s go out for a hard day of work. Sound like a usual everyday’s morning for a lot of people.
Now add just a bit of “intelligence” and interoperability into the same appliances…
5:00 AM: My alarm clock knows that in one hour and a half I’ll wake up. It asks the heating system to bring the bathroom at good temperature in advance.
6:30 AM: My alarm clock triggers the alarm, and wakes me up.
– The alarm clock switches on my favorite morning radio channel (News)/playlist.
– It asks the bedroom light to switch on progressively to wake me up in a smooth way with a different atmosphere, according to:
- The day of the week (working time / week-end / holidays)
- The hour of my waking up.
– Asks a weather system the most recent information on the current weather (asking a website, or our personal connected weather station).
– Sends these information in different remote screens:
- Remote screen
- On my smartphone
- On my smart-TV
- On the smart mirror of my bathroom
- On the multimedia screen of my car
- …
6:40AM: I wake up and go out of the bedroom, to go in the bathroom. Thanks to a simple presence detector embedded in my alarm clock, my alarm clock knows that no one is in the bedroom anymore, and can stop by itself the radio. The alarm clock informs :
- My streaming center/bathroom radio set of the radio station I was listening in the bedroom.
- The coffee machine and toaster that I am in the bathroom.
6:43AM: I come in the bathroom. The radio set, thanks to its embedded presence detector, switches on automatically on the radio station I was listening to in the bedroom.
6 :50AM : I change the radio station to listen to music. The radio station informs all other radio set of my house of my new radio channel.
6:50AM: The coffee machine starts after checking that water and coffee are present. If no coffee is available, a message is sent to my remote screens (and displayed in my bathroom as well, where I stand).
6:55AM: The toaster checks if toasts are present in the toaster, and starts.
7 :00AM : My coffee is ready, as are my crusty toasts.
7 :04AM : I go out of the bathroom, the radio detects that no one is present anymore (thanks to its embedded presence detector) and switches off automatically.
7 :05AM : I enter in the kitchen, hot coffee ready, crusty toasts as well. The radio set of the kitchen detects me and switches on the radio station I chose in the bathroom. The kitchen is in a subdued lighting atmosphere, but will progressively change to a lighting close to daylight during the time I take my breakfast (adaptative lighting based on weather data, piloting the opening of my roller blinds, and my presence time in the kitchen).
7:25AM : End of my breakfast. I go out of the kitchen. My light and my radio set switch off. Back in the bathroom for a short break, bathroom radio detects me and switches on for the time I am in this room, then switches off automatically.
7 :45AM : Leaving my home.
- I take my smartphone with me.
- My door closed, I am going away my home, my whole Smart Interoperable Devices detect that no one is in the house (all presence detector are saying it, the door is closed, my smartphone is not connected anymore in my home network).
All smart interoperable devices embedding a presence detector are entering in a new mode: “home surveillance” mode, and transform their behavior into a network of sentinels/alarm detector. This new behavior allows each device to independently detect a potential intrusion, and will be able to inform me in real time via my smartphone.
7 :47AM : I sit in my car which then proposes me my everyday’s morning radio station, or the one I just selected in the bathroom. Tonight, I know that my car will propose me my favorite radio station of the evening: smooth jazz for a cool road back to home.
Sounds great, doesn’t it?
Today we can hardly realize this scenario:
- With the help of a lot of connected power plugs to pilot start and stop of devices, but we need to buy, install, and configure these devices one by one.
- We need as well to buy, install and configure new set of sensors (e.g. presence detector).
- Or we need to buy an all-in-one pack, from a single manufacturer, but this kind of solutions are generally not answering fully to the needs of users, and force consumers to be captive from a single manufacturer. In addition, these all-in-one solutions require the use of a control center, generally remote, on the manufacturer’s cloud-, and then force users to provide a lot of personal data (habits, presence/absence of the home…) to the manufacturer, which could be a strong brake to adoption of such solutions.
All of existing solutions are generally incomplete, dedicated to a specific device in home (heating system control, power plug control…), are for techno-addicts, are over-complicated to install/configure, and are often very expensive.
It should be so simple for the previous use case to come to reality. Manufacturers need to integrate a few set of additional features/hardware in each devices in order they become a bit smarter than today, and able to communicate with each other’s, through the home network only, with no need of external and constant connection to any kind of cloud.
The time has come for manufacturers to think out of the box, working on new/enhanced use cases and propose their appliances with innovative, but simple, solutions.
It is surprising to notice that manufacturers of radio sets for example never thought on implementing such features: Why letting a radio set switched on, if no one is listening in the room? Why several radio sets of same manufacturers are unable to be automatically synchronize each other on the same radio station? Users still have to do it manually.
A presence detector sensor embeddable into devices costs just a few euros, it is not the main brake. It seems that many manufacturers rest on their laurels, and are no more (or not yet) able to detect innovative features linked with today’s connected home.
The time has really come to integrate these simple features inside each appliance, to make them becoming interoperable with other devices (from other manufacturers), and starting to create an open ecosystem of SIDs, smart interoperable devices.
Technologies related to automatic detection of devices in a local network are available for years, such as UPnP, DLNA, Web services for embedded systems (DPWS), etc.
There is no need of internet access to let these devices being able to detect each other’s. The confidentiality of user’s private life information will not be a break, as no personal data need to go on the internet to make it work: the whole devices must be able to work in the closed ecosystem of user’s home, in an autonomous way.
Internet of Things is just at its beginning, and a lot of IoT solutions are available today with cloud-based solution as the pilar of the ecosystem. SIDs should be able to work with cloud-based devices.
But it is already time to think on the next generation, on innovative products, fully interoperable, working in closed ecosystem of devices, but which do not need by nature an internet or cloud access.
Smart-Interoperable Devices (SIDs) are part of the future of IoT: Working in user’s ecosystem only, and offering more intuitive, more interactive, and a greater protection of private life.
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