Using the IoT for more efficient transport systems
Contemporary transport networks in almost every town and city generally rely on disparate and largely unconnected information technology systems – from ticketing to electronic real-time route and timetable information displays for customers to central communications and operations and more. However over time expectations of both internal and external customers include the almost instant availability of data from every facet of the system. Due to various bureaucratic mismanagement, however, such information demands can’t usually be met. The usual reasons given by those responsible is that of cost overruns from previous projects may be repeated again, employee resistance to change and other luddite-like responses. However with the growth of the Internet-of-Things concept and availability – more than ever such networks can be dragged into the 21st century for all those invested in it. Although there will be an expense in doing so, over time the efficiencies gained with more and relevant information … Continue reading
Roboethics and the Inevitability of Artificial Intelligence
Opinions held in the ethical debate surrounding the creation of artificial intelligence (AI) are as diverse as they are fiercely debated. Not only is there the question of whether or not we’ll be “playing god” by creating a true AI, but also the issue of how we install a set of human-friendly ethics within a sentient machine. With humanity currently divided across numerous of different countries, religions and groups, the question of who gets to make the final call is a tricky one. It may well be left to whichever country gets there first, and the dominating opinion within their government and scientific community. After that, we may just have to let it run and hope for the best. Is the Birth of Artificial Intelligence Inevitable? Each week, scores of academic papers are released from universities the world over staunchly defending the various opinions. One interesting factor … Continue reading
Design challenges for the Internet of Things
As the Internet-of-things industry and products is justifiably booming – like any emerging market or technology area there are several challenges and pitfalls to work through and hopefully avoid. As with the boom in personal computer types in the early 1980s, through to various standards in video and audio media towards the end of the last decade – making the right choices now can be a challenge. When choosing IoT platforms – do you face problems with privacy, security, or expensive over-engineering of technology for technology’s sake? Are you considering replacing existing systems that aren’t really broken in a way that offers no real return in terms of user experience or economic value – just to be on the “latest craze”? With the standards of the IoT not being entirely prevalent or fixed, issues such as reliability, privacy, security, ownership and control of private data still pose questions that are … Continue reading
LX Group discusses the Google Cloud Platform
Recently Google announced their new Cloud Platform services, which allow almost anyone to build applications, websites, store and analyse data using Google’s infrastructure. This is an exciting development for those looking to implement a scalable Internet-of-things system at a minimal cost – so we’ll take an overview of the system as it stands today. Almost everyone is aware of the researched information, computing power and infrastructure available for Google’s myriad of services, and now it’s possible to harness some of this for your own needs. With the introduction of their “Cloud Platform”, you can harness this power that Google has used internally for years to provide Google’s familiar high-speed, high-scale big-data products and services such as Search, YouTube, Google Docs and GMail and make it available as cloud computing services for use with your own Internet-of-Things projects. Large-scale, high-speed, distributed “cloud” storage and computation with large amounts of data is … Continue reading
LX Group discusses MQTT and how it works for the Internet of Things
Although we have recently been focusing on the systems and hardware that can be used in various Internet-of-things applications, there’s much more to learn and understand. One particular aspect is the way in which devices send and receive data between themselves and servers – and an example of that is MQTT. Message Queue Telemetry Transport, or MQTT, is an open protocol for machine-to-machine (M2M) communications that enables the transfer of telemetry-style data in the form of messages from a network of distributed devices to and from a small message “broker” server – whilst maintaining usefulness over high-latency, expensive or bandwidth-constrained networks. This publish/subscribe messaging transport protocol is designed to overcome the challenges of connecting the rapidly expanding physical world of sensors and actuators as well as personal computers and mobile devices. The origin of MQTT goes back to the late 1990s, where co-inventor Andy Stanford-Clark of IBM became immersed in … Continue reading
LX Group examines the Nearbus IoT Open Project
In this instalment in our series of articles focusing on various Internet-of-things systems, we explore the new Nearbus Open IoT Project. Although not the most complex of systems, Nearbus offers a level of control and interaction with devices and sensors which is ideal for demonstrations, proof-of-concept designs or even simple products where rapid development and low-cost are the main requirements. Unlike other systems, Nearbus takes a different approach to device control. After loading the Nearbus on the device’s microcontroller, it is considered to be part of the “cloud” and as such transparent to the web services or API. In other words, you can read or write to the MCU’s registers directly from the cloud – which makes control much simpler than other systems. By “virtualising” the hardware in the cloud, it makes it much easier for existing services to interact with the real hardware, and in a more secure manner. … Continue reading
Google Glass: A Major Step Towards Ubiquitous Computing
Google Glass might be a controversial point of discussion in the media (and not just because of how it looks; more on this later), but what about the future? Recently, we looked at Machine to Machine Communication and the Internet of Things, both of which are fundamental building blocks towards a world of ubiquitous computing. This could be described as a “post-desktop” paradigm whereby interactions and data processing between us, computers and everyday objects are all seamlessly integrated and largely invisible. Exciting stuff. What is Google Glass? For those unaware, Google Glass is an augmented reality headset created by Google’s ‘secret’ research and development lab. It’s essentially a wearable computer with a tiny display which Google claims is akin to viewing a 63 cm monitor from a distance of 2.5 mtrs It supports Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, has a microphone, voice recognition system, small touchpad and a camera with 720p video … Continue reading
LX Group examines the ThingSpeak IoT Platform
Continuing from our previous articles which are focusing on a range of currently-available Internet-of-Things systems, we now move forward and explore another addition to the Internet-of-Things marketplace in more detail – the system known as “ThingSpeak”. Considered to be one of the first openly-available IoT platforms, ThingSpeak operates on their own free server platform, or you can run the software on your own personal servers – and as the entire system is open-source, it’s easier to work with and customise. As with the other systems examined, ThingSpeak gives your devices the opportunity to interact with a server for simple tasks such as data collection and analysis, to integration with your own custom APIs for specific purposes. Due to the open-source nature the start-up cost can be almost zero, and unlike other systems ThingSpeak is hardware agnostic – giving your design team many hardware options. However as always, let’s consider the … Continue reading
