Back to basics: What is IoT? | IoT Insider Podcast Episode 16

Bernie McPhillips
Hey everyone, I’m Bernie McPhillips, Sales Director here at Pangea. And I’m staging yet another takeover of our podcast while our host Dan is away delighted to say I’m joined by Rich Crossingham, our Business Development Director, say hello Rich.

Rich Crossingham
Hey Bernie, what’s the weather like with you?

Bernie McPhillips
Well, it’s actually snowing outside just now quite pretty. But I’m getting a bit bored of it. So bring on the sun. Bring on the British summer. And yeah, I was just thinking, I don’t think we can really call you the new guy anymore, Rich has it been just over six months now you’ve been with us?

Rich Crossingham
Yeah. Yeah, time has flown. Been a lot of interesting projects we’ve been involved with right from the outset.

Bernie McPhillips
That’s funny, you should say that because today on the podcast, we’re going to be going back to IoT basics; answering some foundational questions about the technology. Glad that you’re with me, and yeah let’s start it off. So I think everyone should know by now if you’ve been listening to the podcast, and indeed, in the industry, press etc. IoT stands for the Internet of Things. And I suppose we just like to think of IoT as suppose a conversation between two things, two physical things that could be deemed otherwise to be relatively dumb physical objects, but they’re sending data backwards and forwards data to each other instead of words or just words. So that data could be a temperature reading, monitoring moisture level, a head count in a public space, at a location, if you’re trying to track an asset. Pretty much you name it, right? Is that what you’d say Rich?

Rich Crossingham
Yeah, I think it’s important to point out that a mobile phone or a laptop isn’t IoT. An IoT device is, something that has an internet connection, even though it usually shouldn’t like an internet connected fridge, or if anyone’s got one, an internet connected toaster, not quite sure how popular they are? But yeah, that’s what I was thinking of. In that way on any given day, any person has got a number of direct or indirect interactions with an IoT device. I was thinking, especially from health related products like digital scales and fitbits, and a watch, to your smart home devices like Amazon Echo to even when you’re out and about if you’re out and about buying things, from monitored appliances, like fridges and coffee machines, to even using an ATM.

Bernie McPhillips
Almost got a tear in my eye there Rich, talking about going out and about and going shopping, and hopefully won’t be too far away from being able to do all of those things and many more in the future. You’re absolutely right, I think IoT to a lot of people on the high street, and even amongst many of our listeners, it could be something as relatively straightforward as a connected kitchen appliance so that your coffee is prepared how you like it when you want it, or a fridge that would alert you when your milk is going to go out of date and that type of thing. But I think what’s become really prevalent is, is real cases of IoT in the business world to drive efficiencies, therefore and save money, reduce costs, keep people safe, you know massively important, probably now more than ever. So lots and lots of use cases from a business sense as well. I don’t think it’s a massively recent technology, I think IoT has been talked about a lot recently, and maybe more previous to that particular acronym. Because there’s not enough acronyms in our industry, right, people used to about M2M or Machine to Machine communication. And that would more often than be purely just like reading a metre, you know, sending an electricity or gas reading back to the supplier, so that they don’t need to send a person out to do that instead. As it was IoT for me then became more about outcomes, and actually, you know, driving an actual outcome. Some believe that first M2M experiments actually happened in the 1800s believe it or not, as an English scientist, his name was Charles Wheatstone, and he used copper wires and a balloon to predict the weather so effectively he had a device that he was able to retrieve data from to predict something that was going to happen in the future. But you know, that that may be taking things a little bit far. Where would you see it kind of goes back to?

Rich Crossingham
I like the one where people talk about it starting in the 1980s, where a group of college students equipped a campus vending machine with sensors that would alert them if it ran out of Coca Cola, but my definite favourite one being something of a coffee addict is the one from 1991. So a group of students at the University of Cambridge used a web camera to report on coffee. And they basically came up with the idea to use the first ever web camera prototype to monitor the amount of coffee available in their computer labs coffee pot, they programmed the web camera to take photos three times a minute of the coffee pot, and then the photos were then sent to local computers. So all of them could see if there was still coffee available. And I think that’s great.

Bernie McPhillips
That’s so cool. Now we hear about IoT being referred to as mission critical to a lot of companies, a lot of businesses, public and private organisations. And I don’t think you can argue that coffee isn’t critical to a lot of people and Coca Cola wasn’t critical to those students back in the 80s. So as the technology may have changed and evolve, but I think the underlying sentiment in terms of what people are trying to achieve with the technology hasn’t changed an awful lot. You’ve got an object could be a vending machine or a coffee pot, as we’ve said, and you want to know if you know something happens or is about to happen so you can intervene and stop so I don’t want my Coca Cola vending machine to run out of Coca Cola because I quite like the beverage and want to have a ready supply of it. Vending’s actually an example that I use a lot in my day to day dealings with partners and just trying to explain how IoT actually works. If you think back in the day, I’m sure I’ve used this on a previous podcast, even but you know; man with clipboard in a van would look after a particular area, go to the Depo stock up on everything that a vending machine could possibly need every flavour of crisps every variant of chocolate, every possible type of fizzy drink for an example. And off he would go on his round. He’d stop at his first stop, go in, open the vending machine, make a note on a clipboard of what was actually needed, go back out to the van fill his trolley, take it back in stock the vending machine and then on he’d go to, you know stock number two, which could be in a gym or a public library or a college. Ohh that vending machines quite full, you know, doesn’t need anything and on you go, that was a wasted trip. So IoT for me and in a rather simple sense is those vending machines sending data back to the supplier saying this is what I need. I need 27 bags of cheese and onion, 4 Mars bars, 3 cans of coke, the driver then leaves with all he needs but nothing else. So he’s got a lighter load, therefore would use less fuel, would have less wear and tear on the vehicle because he’s carrying lighter loads and less worn tires, etc. He would only go to the vending machines that needed something.

Rich Crossingham
That’s it, he can also cut off having to go to two or three of the locations because they just don’t need to be replenished.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Then that’s less fuel, lower mileage to potentially lower insurance costs, because insurance is often mileage based. All of these benefits, right? The supplier is then able to monitor and manage their stock more effectively. So probably less food going beyond expiry dates, because you’re only stocking the products that you need more often than not. So thanks very much for mentioning vending and sorry for going off on a little bit of a tangent there. But it’s one that I often use because, yeah, okay, you’ve replaced the very manual and cumbersome process with a more automated and intelligent process by connecting a physical object, a vending machine to the internet and retrieving data from it, and acting upon it. That is IoT for me. But I think IoT really started to gain momentum probably around 10 years ago or so, wireless connectivity, and the networks have had the reach and the bandwidth really powerful enough to enable all kinds of these new solutions. So tell us a bit more, how does it actually work?

Rich Crossingham
I think you hit the nail on the head using the vending machine analogy. But by combining a device or a thing with a sensor that allows it to gather data about the world, whatever’s happening, whether it’s a number of things that need to be replenished, or whether it’s a temperature, anything like that, and using connectivity to help it send that data somewhere else. And I think that’s an important thing to touch upon as well, the connectivity element because that data doesn’t want to be local, it needs to go somewhere.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, you’re absolutely right. The connectivity piece is key. I think what we’ve seen, and certainly what the industry seen in the last 10 years or more is that your more standard mobile data SIMs or your mobile broadband, call it what you will doesn’t always necessarily cut it in IoT, it’s very specialist forms of solutions and devices and therefore often require specialist connectivity. So it might be multi-network service over a single network because the devices could be getting deployed over a very vast geography, some remote places quite difficult to connect, you want multi-network service for ease of deployment don’t have to consider what networks best in each place. The SIM could do that work for you. There’s resilience on your solution. So if there happens to be a local network outage, for example, the SIM could potentially pick up another network in its place and keep your application connected. There are often requirements around IP addressing whether it’s public or private, static VPNs to access your devices remotely. So the connectivity is a really big, a really big part of it. What are the specifics, then Rich, what type of projects? Try and bring it to life for us? With using another example, if you can?

Rich Crossingham
Yeah, I think a good example that we’ve got is the smart bicycle project we did for Birmingham City Council. In its basics, you get a bike, and you equip it with air quality and location sensors, then you connect it to the internet. And whenever anyone’s taking one of those out, you’ve got them helping you create a map of how many miles the rider travels, what the air smog densities like across their routes, and you start building a clear picture of all of that information, but also how much fuel could be saved per bike journey. So it’s all of these kind of data points that you gain from that one project, I find that you know, really, really interesting that it’s all the data that we can collect, but then having a useful end goal. So understanding how you can make the streets cleaner, quieter, how you can get people fitter, all of these things that you can then show as an outcome to the data that you’ve collected for that project.

Bernie McPhillips
I love using that word when we talk about IoT Rich; outcome. I think it is the most important thing. IoT is cool. It feels futuristic, you know start to include technology such as artificial intelligence and automation, but it is all about the outcome, like you say, one application there, right? One solution connecting some bikes to the internet, just multiple layers of outcomes, both social, economic, and environmental types. A really cool example. I think I remember there was one solution that we’ve delivered multiple times over, and it’s been written about in our blogs, etc, previously, is about another physical object, very large, one rather cumbersome, is shipping containers. These things are all over the world, they’re actually quite expensive to make, and maintain and repair. But I imagine, you know, for various reasons, they get damaged, even lost. And I suppose if they get damaged or lost, the things in them are also lost or at risk of being damaged as well. And, you know, potentially you’ve got manufacturers sending their produce all over the world, whether it’s, you know, forms of technology and hardware or clothing or even things that could expire or spoil, like food. So for a manufacturer to be able to track the journey of their product from start to finish and understand where those risks might be. There’ll be multiple benefits than that too, right?

Rich Crossingham
Absolutely. Yeah, it saves in efficiencies, saving money, there’s a vast amount of benefits, you can see from doing that, not only just the basic, immediate one, which is insurance, you know, they’re moving expensive things from one place to another. And if it goes missing, you need to know what’s happened to that, Matisse, or whatever it is, there’s somewhere, but we don’t know where. So yeah, I think that’s, that’s the great thing. I think you learn more as well, as you do more of these deployments, you think, Oh, it’s covering off these three or four things. But then five, six, seven, and eight, those things appear once the solutions in life, and you’re getting the data back, and you suddenly realise that you’ve helped lower your insurance premiums, or you’ve helped understand something else that you didn’t even realise at the time, which you started this project.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, no, absolutely, I’m, I’m quite excited as well by the thought of transporting food. And that could be getting transported over huge distances around the world, but if you were able to track humidity, temperature, other sort of elements of an environment within a container, you could start to predict under what conditions food could potentially spoil whilst on route. And I’ve seen and read about examples of diverting shipments, when it had become apparent that a particular food type or a particular product, it wasn’t going to last the journey, it was going to expire before that. And actually they could reroute and go to a nearer port. And even if it meant selling the product cheaper, as a result of that redirection, at least the product wasn’t entirely spoiled, so less waste, you’re kind of writing off that revenue, less lost revenue for the provider as well.

Rich Crossingham
That’s possibly one of the really interesting, one of the most important things, I think around IoT and the benefits to society. I mean, we’ll talk about Smart Lighting, and all those kinds of things, autonomous vehicles, and drones and all of that we’re not in a Minority Report world yet. But for me, the real important stuff is what you just touched upon, you know, reduction of waste, environmental benefits, all those kinds of things that we can talk about right now. I think a lot of it has been brought to life recently, for people in the UK, who’ve watched the recent Attenborough TV series when they’re looking at the impacts of climate change, and how it impacts all different creatures, and this whole interconnected web in nature and the niches and how everything we’re doing can unbalance that, and then what we’re doing to help rebalance that. And I love some of this stuff, where they’re talking about how IoT can help cut carbon production by 15%, in industrial IoT. So that’s, that’s a great positive thing. And then also, we’ve talked about it recently in our recent IoT talk, which was on the digital forest. And then we took that a step further and talked about the Amazon forest. And then I like to look at other things that are going on right now. So you’ve got IoT in camouflage. So there’s monitoring and tracking in the Amazon rainforest, looking at lumber gangs, harvesting embedded trees, and then geo fenced areas, sending off alerts so that officials know that it’s happening and they can act upon it. Then there’s a great one in California called the Internet of Trees, where they’re looking at a network of sensors that can enable the detection of wildfires in under an hour. So just combating the devastation caused by wildfires. And then you’ve got the UK’s DEFRA project around studying how forests can be used to tackle the climate crisis. And I think those, whilst we can look at really cool things. And I mean, who’s, who’s going to deny the autonomous car is not cool, but we also can look at how IoT can really benefit the environment and things that we’re probably switching on to more and more in the last few years about what we can do to really help minimise the impact that we have on the world.

Bernie McPhillips
Yeah, absolutely Rich. And it’s only sometimes when we have moments like this and take the time to reflect that it really reminds us of the multiple layers of the positive impacts that our solutions actually deliver. We often talk about revenue opportunities for our partners and therefore you know, elements of profit. And when you really step back and think about the benefits outside of business, that we’re having on the planet, and we’re keeping people safer. I say now becoming probably more prevalent and more at the forefront of people’s minds today than ever before, based on what’s happened in the last 10 to 12 months. So simple things like; crowd control, traffic light systems, using heat maps within supermarkets to detect if there’s too many people in one particular area. Clearly social distancing, a very important thing to us now, and likely to be for some time to come. Even to more, what would be deemed slightly more similar, but still very important things like monitoring the levels of soap within a dispenser, or, you know, hand sanitiser, it’s replacing that man with clipboard, replacing the guy who was driving around filling up vending machines, you wouldn’t necessarily pay someone to walk around a huge shopping centre and measure how much sanitisation liquid’s left in all of the bottles. When you could have a small connected sensor on that bottle, that would send an alert when it needed replacing. And it’s about doing things smarter by connecting you know, these objects retrieving the data, being able to act upon it. So there’s never an empty bottle of sanitiser in the shopping centre. Everybody’s got what they need in order to stay safe. And you’re talking before about product efficiencies and everything. Now, we’re certainly using technology an awful lot across all of every business, I would imagine in the world. Video calls instead of meetings, so it’s massively driven down your carbon footprint, where we would normally have gone to travel to meet people face to face. And IoT is just going to build on top of that all the time, they have to remotely monitor your assets, get readings, check on your livestock, if you’re a farmer, whatever it may be, just to make sure that journey is no longer necessary. Therefore less fuel is burned. And you know, things like I was talking before and around tires, insurance, driver behaviour comes into it as well, people just drive a little bit more sensibly if they know they’re being monitored. So drives down your insurance even more, less accidents. So the benefits are just absolutely huge, for something as simple as a soap dispenser, or then the real cool, game changer, Minority Report type of solutions that you talked about earlier, which could be driverless cars, drones, and really cool futuristic things like that. Things that you would only typically, maybe have only dreamt of seeing in the movies, are here right now and will become more prevalent in the future. I think in short, its efficiencies are driven by IoT, massive increase in sustainability and looking after our planet, or making people more safe. And it certainly, gives a lot more control and removes human error, if you’re trying to do things like, restrict the number of people that can enter a certain public space at any one point in time to to keep people safe. Anything else Rich?

Rich Crossingham
I think you’ve covered it all off. That’s great.

Bernie McPhillips
I can certainly sense in you and hopefully the listeners can, you know, the passion and like I’m excited. My hand gestures are getting quite animated whilst talking about this stuff. Because we are huge advocates of IoT connecting everything is exactly what we do. So I think it’s fair to say Rich right, we’re happy to answer any more questions that our listeners might have, talk about any IoT projects that they might want to start or help support with. You can get information from our website, check out our previous blogs, or indeed just give us a call Rich right?

Rich Crossingham
Absolutely. Yeah, we welcome it.

Bernie McPhillips
Awesome. Really enjoyed this. I’m not sure we’ll let the resident host back. Maybe, you and I just do this every month Rich, right?

Rich Crossingham
Yeah, actually, unquestionably, we should be doing this now go forward. It’ll just become the new norm.

Bernie McPhillips
Excellent. That’s what we’ll do. Listen. Thanks very much, everyone. Please take the time to follow us on social media. We’re on LinkedIn, we’re on Twitter, please go to our website and take the time to sign up to our newsletter. We promise not to bombard you with the monthly newsletter, a lot of exciting IoT news and what’s going on within Pangea. And within the industry in general. We’d love to hear from you, so please make contact. But I think for now, thanks for listening. Thank you Rich for your extremely valuable and insightful contribution. I look forward to doing this again soon.

Rich Crossingham
Cheers, Bernie.

Bernie McPhillips
Thanks, everyone. Take care and speak to you soon.