One nice example of what IOT can achieve is described in this article of Wired magazine.
I myself wanted to experience the topics IOT, Cloud, and analytics combined together, with a budget of 50€, during 5 days, at a rate of 1.5 hours per day.
The result of my experiment is this:
I've got an Onion Omega microcomputer (30 USD) that runs Linux and can be connected to any type of sensor, and connects to a Wi-Fi network. I originally wanted to use a Raspberry PI Zero (5 to 10 USD) but they were in Back Order.
In this case I decided to work with a temperature sensor (5 USD). So, inside the Onion I put a Python program (thanks Maria!) that reads the temperature from the sensor and send it to Microsoft Azure Cloud.
Then I used the newest Microsoft analytics services, called PowerBI to create some charts with the resulting data.
In a Nutshell, any small and cheap micro computer connected to a equally small and cheap sensor, and to a WI-FI network can send its reading to a server in the cloud. Then with any device (PC, Smart phone, tablet) connected to the Internet you can analyse and visualise this information. Great, isn't it?!
Right now I'm in the process of creating a platform which enables anybody to collect and analyse information from sensors (whatever sensor you can imagine) in a cheap and fast way. So, if you have an idea where you can use this, please contact me.
Some pictures:
1. The Onion with an USB stick (A) and the temperature sensor (B). The Onion is on top a pack of cigarettes so you can guess its size.
2. A simple dashboard (running on my iPad) that shows the temperature of the last 30 mins, the current temperature, and the average of the last 5 days. I created a couple of artificial temperature variations by putting some ice near the sensor.
