The 'Internet of things’ is coming

IBM is about to release an SDK for something called Mote Runner which could help turn inanimate objects in to Internet connected devices. As ZDNet’s Larry Dignan notes, the Mote Runner moniker refers to Mote’s—or wireless sensor nodes—that gather information ranging from temperature, movement and light and refer back to a network.

What does this all mean? Well on the one hand it’s sort of scary that “things” will start to become connected to the Internet. On the other hand I’d welcome a dashboard I could go to that would allow me to control all the gadgets in my world. By gadgets I’m not talking computers and phones but more the “boring” stuff like the dehumidifier that runs in my basement on occasion or the alarm system in my house…or even just the lighting. I saw a lot of this type of stuff many years ago at the Orange Home in Hatfield where you could send an SMS to your house to have it open the door for the kids (scary)…but as prices drop on hardware and it becomes more ubiquitous, the science fiction becomes more real.

There are tonnes more applications of course beyond my lazily running my estate from the comfort of my PC – important stuff like monitoring pipelines (ahem), tall structures susceptible to natural disasters, or the truly crucial stuff like the temperature of the wine chiller (joke).

Like a few other posts you may have noted here of late, my focus is shifting to be more future oriented. I hope it will continue to hold interest for loyal readers as I’m keen to start shining a light beyond the here today, gone tomorrow news that dominates techmeme.com (which I love) and look a little further out.

Comments

• Anonymous
  June 07, 2010
  Steve - you should check out some of the Intel Intelligent Home stuff (I can point you at folks) as well. We're slowly heading to a future where Hohm, Google Powermeter, EarthAid etc can monitor and manage a lot of whats there. Sadly to get there most of it is going to have to be replaced by smart controller driven appliances or cost effective retro-fitting (we got an ROI for Solar here in Redmond.... assuming no damage to the system it was a 20 year payback unless we moved to low voltage everything!)