This post brought to you by Arrow.com. The content and opinions expressed below are that of TechFruit.
The press coverage surrounding the Internet of Things (IoT) may have died down this year, but that is because we have moved on from the theoretical buzz to reality, with real products available to both consumers and developers.
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple may all be vying to become the leader when it comes to basic implementations of the IoT for the home or office. But the real excitement about the sector comes with the possibilities for developers and DIYers to create specialized and unique systems that play well together and remove friction from our daily lives.
Products like the Arduino microcontroller boards have opened up hardware tinkering to a new generation of product creators. The basic board itself, currently called the Arduino Uno, offers creators a great way to start tinkering – but it is the open standards and wide compatibility with products and sensors from numerous other manufacturers that make the platform truly exciting. Places like Arrow.com stock dozens of compatible sensors and expansion possibilities for the Arduino to make a product sensitive to light, sound, pressure, motion, or just about anything else you can dream up.
Do you want to create a doorbell that is connected to a camera and tweets a photo of the person at the door? Do you want to build kitchen cupboard that automatically start slowly rotating with low-powered motors as soon as you open the door so you can see everything at the back? That is the Internet of Things, and all those parts are available in one place at Arrow.com – where you can build a prototype for something like this for a few hundred dollars.
This stage of the development of the IoT is reliant on the open platforms and protocols employed by Arduino and the large number of compatible boards, sensors, and devices – but it will be defined by tinkerers and DIYers that make use of this new hardware to bring their ideas for a future connected society into life.
These makers are the people with the ideas and the skillset and curiosity to bring make new products a reality. Moreover, with crowdfunding platforms like Indiegogo, these ideas can quickly turn from a garage project into a product with thousands of presale orders. And with Arrow.com’s recent announcement of an Indiegogo collaboration, tinkerers can now have access to industry-leading toolsets, expert engineers, discounted components and manufacturing, design and supply chain logistics to successfully bring that product to market.
The information we now have at our fingertips, with the complete datasheets and editable reference guides available at Arrow.com means that learning how to make an IoT idea become a real working product has never been more accessible.
The hardware is widely available, the open protocols have been developed, crowd finance is a viable option, and the information is freely available – the planets have finally aligned for the IoT to become a reality.
Now is the time that all in the world gets connected.
Images by Dometorres / Bernard Goldbach
