Every now and then, an object comes along that subtly changes your life. It could be a book arming you with a new set of concepts, an upgraded phone that changes the way you socialise, or a borrowed soldering iron and instructions on how to use it. These objects can provide watershed moments – turning points which alter the way in which you view the world. Last year, I received one of these objects as a gift. It was a lightbulb.
On one level, this lightbulb functions in the same way as those beaming from ceilings around the world. It screws into a standard light fitting and works with the switch on your wall. It also, however, comes with a glowing base station which plugs into a Wi-Fi router. Download an app on your phone, pair it to the base, and things get much more interesting.
Using the app, the bulb can be made to flood the room with colour – from dim magenta to a bright blue-white which mimics summer sunlight. It can be programmed to fade in and wake you up in the morning, or turn on while you’re out of the house to make the place look occupied. Because your phone knows where the base station is, you can set the lights to turn off as soon as you’re a certain distance from home. Buy a sufficient number of bulbs and you can control the lighting for the whole house.
While impressive, none of this functionality changed my life. For me, the turning point happened one cold night, where, from the comfort of my own bed, I reached for my phone and asked Siri to turn off the lights.
It worked perfectly. In that moment, not only did I feel like Tony Stark in Iron Man, but I appreciated the power of "the Internet of Things".
In one sense, my lightbulb moment arrived rather late. The phrase "the Internet of Things" (IoT) was coined by Kevin Ashton in 1999 and has since been applied to a bewildering range of ideas and technologies by companies eager to sell products.
IoT, however, hinges on a very simple idea: "things" should be able to collect and communicate relevant data to the objects and humans around them. This data is often acted upon by the objects themselves but can also be analysed to better understand a system – to learn, for example, about the routines of the humans using it.
The things in question could be as simple as an Radio-Frequency Identification (RFID) chip on a milk bottle, or as complex as the engine in your car; the key idea is that they are able to interact. To give a domestic example, your "smart" door lock could tell your lights that you’re home, turn on the heating and disable the security camera in your bedroom. This isn’t an abstract example – it’s currently possible with existing technology. Further, it’s easy to set up – most devices are packaged with everything they need in order to run, though if you have existing IoT hardware you might need to check that any new gadget will be able to talk to it.
Importantly, while the rules governing what happens when you unlock your door can be as complex as needed, IoT objects are often most effective when they concentrate on doing one job and doing it well – locking or unlocking, turning on or off. The system’s power stems from its interconnectivity, allowing objects to follow orders and tell other appliances what is happening to them. This lends IoT solutions a flexibility not often found in home systems.

Source: The National