What is the Internet of Things?

Since the beginning of the Digital Revolution in the 50s of the last century, a series of groundbreaking platform technologies have been born. Although this work was initially confined to a small group, it gradually developed extremely rapidly, to the point where technologies that seemed only found in novels were widely applied.

The convergence of innovative devices across different genres (e.g. RFID chips, sensors and the internet) coupled with improved accessibility eventually gave birth to the concept of the Internet of Things. (Iodine). IoT technology marks a giant leap in the Computer Age, allowing more than just computers to be connected via the Internet.


History of IoT

The first known application of IoT was at MIT University of Technology. Here students used low-cost sensors to monitor and replenish drinks for coke vending machines on campus. Around 1994, many advances in the field of IoT were made, including a paper by Reza Raji that proposed the idea of ​​transferring data packets to automate homes and factories.

Around the 1990s, Microsoft Corporation and many other companies began experimenting with similar ideas, and from 2002 onwards, the media gradually paid attention to breakthroughs in the IoT industry - the application of smart devices. Smart devices are connected to each other and managed through an information system. However, 2008 is the year many consider the official birth of the IoT industry, with the number of devices connected to the internet exceeding the number of people accessing the network.


How does IoT work?

IoT technology is fundamentally based on the interconnection through the internet of many physical objects and devices, often including a network of many sensors and non-computer devices, that communicate with computers and devices. other devices. These devices can range from thermostats and heart rate monitors to sprinklers or home security systems. Innovation in IoT technology enables users to remotely manage, control, automate and check the status of a variety of devices and sensors used in both homes and autonomous vehicles. drive.


IoT applications in life and family

IoT technology has many deployment methods to serve people's daily lives and activities. The most common examples include home automation systems in which home appliances such as lights, air conditioning, heating and even security systems are managed by automated devices. These devices can also be connected to personal devices such as smart watches, phones or connected to a central management device designed to control all products in the system. smart home (like smart TV or refrigerator).

Automated housing systems have great potential in improving the quality of life of the elderly and people with disabilities thanks to special assistive technologies for people with hearing and visual impairments or difficulty walking. again. There are also real-time sensors that alert users if their loved one shows signs of an irregular heartbeat or falls. Another pretty good application is that there are smart beds that have the function of checking whether someone is using them or not. This type of bed is currently being tested by hospitals to check on patients.


IoT applications in commerce and industry

In industries, people are now using sensors to monitor climate environmental indicators such as temperature, humidity, pressure and air quality. IoT devices are also used by farmers to track water and food replenishment for their livestock products, and by factories to check product inventories. In addition, people also use automatic machines to order more products whose supply is lower than the specified threshold.


Defect

The Internet of Things brings many interesting innovations to life and will certainly continue to develop in the future. However, there are still certain limitations, for example, the use of IoT systems in both commercial and residential applications will increase the number of devices needed to manage and connect depending on the application. connect to the internet. Installing these devices if not properly will result in users having to access too many applications to be able to monitor all of those devices, which is very time consuming and uninteresting to the user. .

It is for this reason that companies such as Apple or Lenovo have developed applications that allow devices to be managed in their own ecosystems such as the iOS environment, including voice control functions. IoT platforms all operate around central controllers that operate regardless of connecting via the Internet or WiFi. Typical examples include Amazon's Echo or Samsung's Smartthings Hub controller. From there, devices operating in the IoT system are linked to a sensor directly connected to the internet or via a WiFi receiver, acting as a central controller to monitor activities.


IoT Cryptocurrency

Currently, many IoT systems tend to rely on micro-financial transactions between digital devices, which requires IoT devices to be interconnected using a method that can be applied easily. economic form called machine-to-machine (M2M) - based on the exchange of currency between digital devices. This has spurred growth in demand for currencies that are compatible with IoT systems, and cryptocurrency is the most suitable currency for this type.

Initially, many thought that blockchain itself would form the basic framework for the M2M form thanks to its micropayment capabilities and heavy use by cryptocurrencies. However, many blockchain networks are limited in the number of transactions per second they can process. Therefore, if most current Proof of Work and Proof of Stake blockchains are used, they will have limited scalability and are not suitable for processing large-scale M2M microtransactions. It is for this reason that many blockchain projects are currently trying to implement solutions to the scaling problem, including Bitcoin Lightning Network or Ethereum Plasma updates.


IOTA

IOTA (Internet of Things Application) is a project that focuses heavily on IoT solutions with the goal of becoming the backbone of today's emerging M2M economy. This project builds an open source distributed ledger protocol that, unlike bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, does not require miners to verify transactions. IOTA is not based on a blockchain network, but its foundation is a stream of linked transactions they call “tangle”.

The tangle platform consists of a network in which users' transactions will be directly authenticated by themselves only on the condition that they have made 2 successful transactions before. The limit on the number of transactions processed per second will be correlated to the number of users in the network.

IOTA is a complex and highly experimental cryptocurrency, the only one that uses a tangle structure. There are still many technical problems remaining and the tangle structure still needs more time to prove its effectiveness. However, this is still a project that offers an innovative concept and if the project developers can overcome the current limitations, this is an extremely suitable project for the industry. IoT and the M2M economy.


Conclude

The Internet of Things (IoT) will no matter what the need to automate, monitor and control devices on a large scale, helping to improve the quality of life and increase the efficiency of industries. other. Cryptocurrencies will have many opportunities to become part of the IoT revolution as digital currencies for microtransactions and the M2M economy. Currently, there are not many cryptocurrency projects participating in this segment. However,  with the current extremely fast pace of technological development, we believe that more new projects will appear in the near future.