An Internet Of Things

In the history of the Internet, and the ‘C’ Programming Language, the humble toaster has been used as an unusual example of a device that might be connected to the Internet. In the ‘C’ Programming Language, the decision was made that commands to place text onto a display should not be part of the core language, because you might want to have the software running on a toaster, and toasters of course do not have displays. That was in the 1970’s, and it was almost unimaginable that a toaster would even have an embedded computer inside.  Things have changed since then. Not only do some toasters have a microprocessor, but they often have small displays as well. What was once absurd is now commonplace.

Likewise, in the development of the Internet, the Internet Connected Toaster was used in the 1980’s as an example related to various protocols within the Internet. Once again, it was one of those examples that people use never expecting to come true.

But things have changed. In 2006 I needed to develop a circuit that turned a phone on by pressing a button. Unfortunately, if you pressed the button a second time, the phone would turn off. I wanted the phone on all the time. The manufacturer of the phone suggested a circuit to do this, but to be honest, it looked too complex. So I added a $3 microprocessor to the design, and added the code to turn the phone on if it was not already turned on. Soon after I worked out that the phone was locking up at certain times, so reprogrammed the chip to reset the phone if that happened. This is the sort of thing you can do if you build intelligence into a device.

Since then things have changed significantly. Some time in the first decade of the 21st century, Australia had more mobile phone services activated than people in the country. Since then, things have just exploded. I have four services activated – my iPhone, iPad, house alarm and my GPS Tracker in the car. Multiply that by the population of the country, or the world, and things quickly add up.

The world is moving to the extreme – where everything is connected. The new term for this is an Internet Of Things. I have seen extreme examples, such as soil moisture sensors that tell you if your plants need watering, by sending a message to your phone via a data centre on the other side of the world. Another example is a door bell that sends you a picture of the person at your door to your mobile phone. Ideas like this might sound extreme, but welcome to the Internet Of Things.