Designing the Internet of Things

Adrian McEwen, Hakim Cassimally

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781118430620
• eBook ISBN: 9781118430651
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Systems Architecture
• Index: Computer Science

Take your idea from concept to production with this unique guide

Whether it's called physical computing, ubiquitous computing, or the Internet of Things, it's a hot topic in technology: how to channel your inner Steve Jobs and successfully combine hardware, embedded software, web services, electronics, and cool design to create cutting-edge devices that are fun, interactive, and practical. If you'd like to create the next must-have product, this unique book is the perfect place to start.

Both a creative and practical primer, it explores the platforms you can use to develop hardware or software, discusses design concepts that will make your products eye-catching and appealing, and shows you ways to scale up from a single prototype to mass production.

• Helps software engineers, web designers, product designers, and electronics engineers start designing products using the Internet-of-Things approach
• Explains how to combine sensors, servos, robotics, Arduino chips, and more with various networks or the Internet, to create interactive, cutting-edge devices
• Provides an overview of the necessary steps to take your idea from concept through production

If you'd like to design for the future, Designing the Internet of Things is a great place to start.

I
Prototyping

1. Chapter 1: The Internet of Things: An Overview
2. Chapter 2: Design Principles for Connected Devices
3. Chapter 3: Internet Principles
4. Chapter 4: Thinking About Prototyping
5. Chapter 5: Prototyping Embedded Devices
6. Chapter 6: Prototyping the Physical Design
7. Chapter 7: Prototyping Online Components
8. Chapter 8: Techniques for Writing Embedded Code

1
The Internet of Things: an Overview

The first question that we should attempt to answer is, of course, what is the Internet of Things? Although the concepts we call on throughout this book are relatively straightforward, people have many different visions of what the phrase means, and many of the implications are hard to grasp. So we will take this question slowly in this chapter and look at it from a number of different angles.

What does the phrase “Internet of Things” mean? And how does it relate to the earlier buzzword “ubiquitous computing”? For those who are interested in the history of technological progress, where does the Internet of Things sit in the broad sweep of things, and why are we talking about it now? For those who understand best through metaphors, we look at the idea of enchanted objects, an image which has described technology for millennia but which is especially potent when describing the Internet of Things. For the more practical readers who understand by seeing examples of real things, we sketch out some of the exciting projects that give a good flavour of this exciting field. Let’s start with this last approach, with a short piece of “design fiction”.

The Flavour of the Internet of Things

The alarm rings. As you open your eyes blearily, you see that it’s five minutes later than your usual wake-up time. The clock has checked the train times online, and your train must be delayed, so it lets you sleep in a little longer. (See http://makezine.com/magazine/make-11/my-train-schedule-alarm-clock/.)

In your kitchen, a blinking light reminds you it’s time to take your tablets. If you forget, the medicine bottle cap goes online and emails your doctor to let her know. (See www.vitality.net/glowcaps.html.)

On your way out of the house, you catch a glow in the corner of your eye. Your umbrella handle is lit up, which means that it has checked the BBC weather reports and predicts rain. You sigh and pick it up. (See www.materious.com/#/projects/forecast/.)

As you pass the bus stop on the way to the station, you notice the large LCD display flash that the number 23 is due. It arrives when you turn the next corner. When the bus company first installed those displays, they ran on the expected timetable information only, but now that every bus has GPS tracking its location, they simply connect to the bus company’s online service and always give the updated information. Various transport organizations have implemented this. London’s TfL has some useful information on their signs at www.tfl.gov.uk/corporate/projectsandschemes/11560.aspx.

When you get to the station, your phone checks you in automatically to a location-based service (such as Foursquare). On your mantelpiece at home, an ornament with a dial notices the change and starts to turn so that the text on it points to the word “Travelling”. Your family will also see later that you’ve arrived at “Work” safely. (See http://wheredial.com.)

On your lunch break, a pedometer in your training shoes and a heart monitor in your wrist band help track your run around the block. The wrist band’s large display also makes it easy to glance down and see how fast you are running and how many calories you’ve burned. All the data is automatically uploaded to your sports tracking site, which also integrates with your online supermarket shopping account to make it easy to compare with how many calories you’ve eaten. (See http://nikeplus.nike.com/plus/.)

As you can see from the preceding links, each of these products is feasible with today’s technology. Each has been prototyped, and many of them exist as craft or mass-market products.

The “Internet” of “Things”

We’ve looked at a number of examples of the Internet of Things, so what is the common thread that binds them together? And why the name? All the cases we saw used the Internet to send, receive, or communicate information. And in each case, the gadget that was connected to the Internet wasn’t a computer, tablet, or mobile phone but an object, a Thing. These Things are designed for a purpose: the umbrella has a retractable canopy and a handle to hold it. A bus display has to be readable to public transport users, including the elderly and partially sighted and be able to survive poor weather conditions and the risk of vandalism. The sports bracelet is easy to wear while running, has a display that is large enough and bright enough to read even when you are moving, and will survive heat, cold, sweat, and rain.

Many of the use cases could be fulfilled, and often are, by general-purpose computers. Although we don’t carry a desktop PC around with us, many people do carry a laptop or tablet. More to the point, in almost every country now, most people do carry a mobile phone, and in many cases this is a smartphone that easily has enough power for any task one could throw at a computer. Let’s see how well one could replicate these tasks with a smartphone.

Viewing your bus provider’s timetable with a smartphone web browser seems to fulfil the same function at first glance. But just consider that last phrase, “at first glance”. On arriving at the bus stop, one can simply glance at the computerised timetable and see when the next bus is due. With a smartphone, if you have one and can afford the data use (which may be prohibitive if you are a foreign tourist), you have to take the phone out of your pocket or bag, unlock it, navigate to the right website (this may be the slowest and most complicated part of the process, whether you have to type the URL or use a QR code), and read the data from a small screen. In this time, you are not able to fully concentrate on the arriving buses and might even miss yours.

You can track your runs with an app on your smartphone, and many people do: the phone has GPS, many other useful sensors, processing power, an Internet connection, and a great screen. But it turns out that such a phone isn’t easy to carry on a run without worrying about dropping it or getting it wet. Plenty of carrying options are available, from a waist bag to an arm strap. The latter, in theory, enables you to read the device while you are running, but in practice reading details on the screen can be hard while you are jiggling up and down! To get around this difficulty, apps such as RunKeeper provide regular audio summaries which can be useful (www.runkeeper.com). Ultimately, a phone is a perfectly capable device for tracking your run, and most runners will find it a sufficient, comfortable, and fun way of logging their running data. However, others may well prefer a device worn as a watch or wristband, designed to be read on the move, worn in the rain, and connected to peripherals such as heart monitors.

Of course, no mobile phone (or even tablet or laptop) is large enough or waterproof enough to use as an umbrella. However, you could pair a smartphone with a normal “dumb” umbrella, by checking an app to see whether it is likely to rain later, before you leave the house. Unlike a calm, subtle light in the umbrella stand, glimpsed from the corner of your eye as an ambient piece of information to process subconsciously when you pass it on the way out of your home, an app requires you to perform several actions. If you are able to establish and maintain the habit of doing this check, it will be just as effective. Rather than having greater capabilities, the smart umbrella simply moves the same intelligence into your environment so that you don’t have to change your routine.

So the idea of the Internet of Things suggests that rather than having a small number of very powerful compu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• I Prototyping
• II From Prototype to Reality
• Index
• End User License Agreement