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The Internet of Things: Dr. John Barrett at TEDxCIT

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Limor "Ladyada" Fried is the founder and CEO of Adafruit Industries, an open-source hardware company. A founding member of the NYC Industrial Business Advisory Council, she was named a White House Champion of Change in 2016.
The Internet of Things is all about connections-connecting your electronics design, product, or project to the wider world. We start with the idea that you have a "Thing" that you want to connect to the "Internet of."

How do you do that? Usually you start with something you'd like to improve. Say you love fish and have a home or school aquarium. Since you've got some really fancy fish, they need the water temperature to stay between 20 and 30 degrees Centigrade. You could always check the water temperature, but it would be better if you had a microcontroller to help you out!

You could start with a simple temperature manager, but even better would be one that could email or text you to let you know if something went amiss and maybe the heater broke. That's what the Internet of Things is all about: Making stuff smart!

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A Bluetooth-enabled Adafruit board.

What is Adafruit?

I design that "smart stuff"-the electronics and code for makers who make real things in the real world. We also teach them how to make their ideas come to life. Some are simple projects, like getting an alert if there is water in your basement. Others are getting real-time information like transit schedules and displaying it at home so you know when your bus is coming.

Some of our favorite IoT projects are ones that make life easier for people who need Accessibility Technology (AT). For example, a project from our friend Chris Young, who not only uses AT but designs it, for people who have the same needs he does! He has written up how to make an IoT remote control so he can use a laptop or tablet with touchscreen to turn on/off devices in his house.

What we think is the most exciting part of IoT's future is seeing makers and coders design the devices that best suit them and their community. Instead of relying on what's available in the store, customization and optimizations will let small-scale engineering happen by the people who will actually use it!

We made an internet of things service called "adafruit.io" that gets you started quick and easy, so your things can spend more time on the internet, not just trying to get going.

The best language for IoT

Here at Adafruit, we like using Python to program IoT devices. What, a snake? Close! The Python programming language is the fastest-growing programming language that beginners and experts alike use. Python is great for IoT for a lot of reasons.

IoT is all about getting and sending data. Maybe you want your aquarium to let you know when the temperature is too high or too low. You could code this up in Python using an if conditional:

water_temp = acquarium_temperature() # read the sensor if water_temp > 30: send_text_message("Help! The water in the aquarium is too hot!") if water_temp < 20: send_text_message("Oh no! The water in the aquarium is too cold!")

Even simple examples such as the above are super powerful when you add the Internet, email, cellular and text messages so that your programming can reach outside your screen.

Why Python and IoT?

Why is Python so great for IoT? First, of course, is how popular it is-it's available for any and all computers. It's also really great for parsing text, in particular the "structured data in text" that the Internet runs on, often referred to as HTML, XML or JSON. Other languages may be faster in some ways, but they often struggle to do regular expressions, text parsing or moving from one data format to another.

Python has flexible memory management, so you don't have to worry about pointers or memory. This comes at a cost to speed, but helps avoid some of the ickiest security problems that plague IoT devices. You definitely don't want to accidentally turn your smart aquarium into a botnet!

Python also has exception handling, which is a "proper" way to handle errors compared to some languages. Whenever you expose your devices to the Internet, you'll have inconsistent connections (e.g., "the WiFi is down!") or unexpected data sent your way. Exceptions mean that even if you are a little lazy and forget to check a value or function output, your program will be more likely halt rather than blithely continue with incorrect instructions.

And of course, Python comes with the kitchen sink-so much is included already, so you can get started faster than ever. Not only is Python available on computers like your desktop or laptop, it also comes on embedded computers like the Raspberry Pi and on microcontrollers as Circuit Python.

Learning Python is a great way to make internet-connected things, and to share data and creativity around the world. Cuddle up to this friendly snake and check out learn.adafruit.com for thousands of free IoT projects you can build with Python!

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Limor "Ladyada" Fried is the founder and CEO of Adafruit Industries, an open-source hardware company. A founding member of the NYC Industrial Business Advisory Council, she was named a White House Champion of Change in 2016. The Internet of Things is all about connections-connecting your electronics design, product, or project to the wider world.

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What is the Internet of Things? And why should you care? | Benson Hougland | TEDxTemecula

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What is the Internet of Things, and how does it work?

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The Internet of Things, or IoT, impacts everything from the way we travel and do our shopping to the way we keep fit. But how exactly does it work?

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Broadband has brought with it some amazing advances. The move away from having to dial-in for internet access to having always-on connections has meant that we can connect more and more to the internet than ever before.

Wireless, too, has improved things no end. It has given us small, portable devices that can all talk to the internet.

And it is from this that the so-called 'internet of things' (IoT) has grown.

[Read more: BT chief researcher explores the expanding 'Internet of Things']

What's the idea of the internet of things?

This concept is about giving more and more devices in your home ability to talk to each other.

In the future, every LED lightbulb and home appliance will be able to tell you their status, as will your heating and security systems - and you'll be able to control them from anywhere in the world.

You can even get them to communicate with each other, perhaps to use a motion detector to switch on your bedroom light when someone walks up your drive, or have your fridge order food when you're running low.

How will we use the internet of things?

Watch the video below to see how all your devices can be linked together through your phone.

Expect to see your phone manage your heating and air conditioning by detecting where you are on your journey home and turning on the heat via a device like the Nest thermostat.

Philips' Hue connected lighting system brings lighting controls to your smartphone, while the Smarter coffee machine wakes you when your morning coffee is ready.

[Read more: The thermostat that saves you money - video]

How can they work together?

Devices within the internet of things will be able to communicate with each other. The Nest Learning Thermostat works with the Nest Protect Carbon Dioxide alarm. If the carbon monoxide alarm goes off, the Nest Thermostat automatically turns off your boiler.

Google-owned Nest's 'Works with Nest' programme allows devices from other manufacturers to work with the Nest system.

These include:

Google Home and Google Home Mini

Whirlpool washer dryers - works with the Nest Thermostat to detect when you are home and switches to quiet mode, or if it notices you are away, activates a refresh mode so your clothes remain fresh.

Phillips Hue lighting - when Nest Protect senses something is wrong it flashes on/off to get your attention

Back at the CES 2015 trade show, Samsung boss BK Yoon, talked about the importance of an open ecosystem within the internet of things, so devices from different manufacturers could communicate with each other.

"I have heard some people say they want to create a single operating system for the IoT. However, this OS only seems to work with their own technology. That's not enough. The IoT experience needs to be seamless. "

"I know in my heart to make the IoT happen, it takes more than one company, more than one industry, to create this IoT universe. We all have to work together. It's coming. What we are holding in our hands are infinite possibilities. Now it's up to us to unlock them."

[Read more: See how your voice, your smartphone and cameras can control your home]

What is the point of the internet of things?

Well, no doubt some people will see none at all, and will actively avoid this technology.

For others, it might be used for security, such as Fibaro's system telling if someone is breaking into your home - or keeping an eye on your children, and where they go after school.

Like all technology, it could be enormously intrusive or a massive boost to convenience.

The potential for the internet of things is massive, but it's also perhaps the most daunting direction technology has taken us yet.

There are people who are worried about Facebook, so how are they going to react to the idea of every electronic device in their home monitoring itself (and perhaps you) and feeding that information to outside companies or individuals?

Friend or foe, it's clear that technology will integrate further with our home lives.

[Read more: Will the Internet of Things be more trouble than it's worth?]

How is BT involved in the internet of things?

BT along with nine other British companies was awarded £50,000 from the government in 2015 to research the potential of the internet of things.

BT's idea is to devise a service using information from traffic-related sources. This could include transport apps that estimate journey times based on what is happening on the road. The information could be help the police or Highways agency to deal with incidents more efficiently to get traffic moving.

BT is also working in Manchester on City Verve. BT is working with Cisco, the city, local universities and small businesses to run innovative services using the IoT. It has received £10 million UK government funding.

[Read more: Everything you can do with the Amazon Echo]

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Broadband has brought with it some amazing advances. The move away from having to dial-in for internet access to having always-on connections has meant that we can connect more and more to the internet than ever before. Wireless, too, has improved things no end.

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Smart Propane Tank This super smart propane tank gauge connects to an app on your mobile device so no matter where you are, you'll always know when it's t...

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Top 10 IoT(Internet Of Things) Projects Of All Time | 2018

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Top 10  IoT(Internet Of Things) Projects Of All Time | 2018

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5 IOT Inventions that will BLOW YOUR MIND

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The Internet of things ( IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software, and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communications networks. Internet of things has been considered a misnomer because devices do not need to be connected to the public internet, they only need to be connected to a network and be individually addressable.

The field has evolved due to the convergence of multiple technologies, including ubiquitous computing, commodity sensors, increasingly powerful embedded systems, and machine learning. Traditional fields of embedded systems, wireless sensor networks, control systems, automation (including home and building automation), independently and collectively enable the Internet of things. In the consumer market, IoT technology is most synonymous with products pertaining to the concept of the " smart home", including devices and appliances (such as lighting fixtures, thermostats, home security systems, cameras, and other home appliances) that support one or more common ecosystems, and can be controlled via devices associated with that ecosystem, such as smartphones and smart speakers. IoT is also used in healthcare systems.

The main concept of a network of smart devices was discussed as early as 1982, with a modified Coca-Cola vending machine at Carnegie Mellon University becoming the first ARPANET-connected appliance, able to report its inventory and whether newly loaded drinks were cold or not. Mark Weiser's 1991 paper on ubiquitous computing, "The Computer of the 21st Century", as well as academic venues such as UbiComp and PerCom produced the contemporary vision of the IOT. In 1994, Reza Raji described the concept in IEEE Spectrum as "[moving] small packets of data to a large set of nodes, so as to integrate and automate everything from home appliances to entire factories". Between 1993 and 1997, several companies proposed solutions like Microsoft's at Work or Novell's NEST. The field gained momentum when Bill Joy envisioned device-to-device communication as a part of his "Six Webs" framework, presented at the World Economic Forum at Davos in 1999.

The concept of the "Internet of things" and the term itself, first appeared in a speech by Peter T. Lewis, to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation 15th Annual Legislative Weekend in Washington, D.C, published in September 1985. According to Lewis, "The Internet of Things, or IoT, is the integration of people, processes and technology with connectable devices and sensors to enable remote monitoring, status, manipulation and evaluation of trends of such devices."

The term "Internet of things" was coined independently by Kevin Ashton of Procter & Gamble, later of MIT's Auto-ID Center, in 1999, though he prefers the phrase "Internet for things". At that point, he viewed radio-frequency identification (RFID) as essential to the Internet of things, which would allow computers to manage all individual things. The main theme of the Internet of things is to embed short-range mobile transceivers in various gadgets and daily necessities to enable new forms of communication between people and things, and between things themselves.

In 2004 Cornelius "Pete" Peterson, CEO of NetSilicon, predicted that, "The next era of information technology will be dominated by [IoT] devices, and networked devices will ultimately gain in popularity and significance to the extent that they will far exceed the number of networked computers and workstations." Peterson believed that medical devices and industrial controls would become dominant applications of the technology.

IoT devices are a part of the larger concept of home automation, which can include lighting, heating and air conditioning, media and security systems and camera systems. Long-term benefits could include energy savings by automatically ensuring lights and electronics are turned off or by making the residents in the home aware of usage.

A smart home or automated home could be based on a platform or hubs that control smart devices and appliances. For instance, using Apple's HomeKit, manufacturers can have their home products and accessories controlled by an application in iOS devices such as the iPhone and the Apple Watch. This could be a dedicated app or iOS native applications such as Siri. This can be demonstrated in the case of Lenovo's Smart Home Essentials, which is a line of smart home devices that are controlled through Apple's Home app or Siri without the need for a Wi-Fi bridge. There are also dedicated smart home hubs that are offered as standalone platforms to connect different smart home products and these include the Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple's HomePod, and Samsung's SmartThings Hub. In addition to the commercial systems, there are many non-proprietary, open source ecosystems; including Home Assistant, OpenHAB and Domoticz.

One key application of a smart home is to provide assistance to elderly individuals and to those with disabilities. These home systems use assistive technology to accommodate an owner's specific disabilities. Voice control can assist users with sight and mobility limitations while alert systems can be connected directly to cochlear implants worn by hearing-impaired users. They can also be equipped with additional safety features, including sensors that monitor for medical emergencies such as falls or seizures. Smart home technology applied in this way can provide users with more freedom and a higher quality of life.

The term "Enterprise IoT" refers to devices used in business and corporate settings. By 2019, it is estimated that the EIoT will account for 9.1 billion devices.

The Internet of Medical Things ( IoMT) is an application of the IoT for medical and health related purposes, data collection and analysis for research, and monitoring. The IoMT has been referenced as "Smart Healthcare", as the technology for creating a digitized healthcare system, connecting available medical resources and healthcare services.

IoT devices can be used to enable remote health monitoring and emergency notification systems. These health monitoring devices can range from blood pressure and heart rate monitors to advanced devices capable of monitoring specialized implants, such as pacemakers, Fitbit electronic wristbands, or advanced hearing aids. Some hospitals have begun implementing "smart beds" that can detect when they are occupied and when a patient is attempting to get up. It can also adjust itself to ensure appropriate pressure and support is applied to the patient without the manual interaction of nurses. A 2015 Goldman Sachs report indicated that healthcare IoT devices "can save the United States more than $300 billion in annual healthcare expenditures by increasing revenue and decreasing cost." Moreover, the use of mobile devices to support medical follow-up led to the creation of 'm-health', used analyzed health statistics."

Specialized sensors can also be equipped within living spaces to monitor the health and general well-being of senior citizens, while also ensuring that proper treatment is being administered and assisting people to regain lost mobility via therapy as well. These sensors create a network of intelligent sensors that are able to collect, process, transfer, and analyze valuable information in different environments, such as connecting in-home monitoring devices to hospital-based systems. Other consumer devices to encourage healthy living, such as connected scales or wearable heart monitors, are also a possibility with the IoT. End-to-end health monitoring IoT platforms are also available for antenatal and chronic patients, helping one manage health vitals and recurring medication requirements.

Advances in plastic and fabric electronics fabrication methods have enabled ultra-low cost, use-and-throw IoMT sensors. These sensors, along with the required RFID electronics, can be fabricated on paper or e-textiles for wireless powered disposable sensing devices. Applications have been established for point-of-care medical diagnostics, where portability and low system-complexity is essential.

As of 2018 IoMT was not only being applied in the clinical laboratory industry, but also in the healthcare and health insurance industries. IoMT in the healthcare industry is now permitting doctors, patients, and others, such as guardians of patients, nurses, families, and similar, to be part of a system, where patient records are saved in a database, allowing doctors and the rest of the medical staff to have access to patient information. Moreover, IoT-based systems are patient-centered, which involves being flexible to the patient's medical conditions. IoMT in the insurance industry provides access to better and new types of dynamic information. This includes sensor-based solutions such as biosensors, wearables, connected health devices, and mobile apps to track customer behavior. This can lead to more accurate underwriting and new pricing models.

The application of the IoT in healthcare plays a fundamental role in managing chronic diseases and in disease prevention and control. Remote monitoring is made possible through the connection of powerful wireless solutions. The connectivity enables health practitioners to capture patient's data and applying complex algorithms in health data analysis.

The IoT can assist in the integration of communications, control, and information processing across various transportation systems. Application of the IoT extends to all aspects of transportation systems (i.e. the vehicle, the infrastructure, and the driver or user). Dynamic interaction between these components of a transport system enables inter- and intra-vehicular communication, smart traffic control, smart parking, electronic toll collection systems, logistics and fleet management, vehicle control, safety, and road assistance.

In vehicular communication systems, vehicle-to-everything communication (V2X), consists of three main components: vehicle to vehicle communication (V2V), vehicle to infrastructure communication (V2I) and vehicle to pedestrian communications (V2P). V2X is the first step to autonomous driving and connected road infrastructure.

IoT devices can be used to monitor and control the mechanical, electrical and electronic systems used in various types of buildings (e.g., public and private, industrial, institutions, or residential) in home automation and building automation systems. In this context, three main areas are being covered in literature:

The integration of the Internet with building energy management systems in order to create energy-efficient and IOT-driven "smart buildings".

The possible means of real-time monitoring for reducing energy consumption and monitoring occupant behaviors.

The integration of smart devices in the built environment and how they might be used in future applications.

Also known as IIoT, industrial IoT devices acquire and analyze data from connected equipment, operational technology (OT), locations, and people. Combined with operational technology (OT) monitoring devices, IIoT helps regulate and monitor industrial systems. Also, the same implementation can be carried out for automated record updates of asset placement in industrial storage units as the size of the assets can vary from a small screw to the whole motor spare part, and misplacement of such assets can cause a loss of manpower time and money.

The IoT can connect various manufacturing devices equipped with sensing, identification, processing, communication, actuation, and networking capabilities. Network control and management of manufacturing equipment, asset and situation management, or manufacturing process control allow IoT to be used for industrial applications and smart manufacturing. IoT intelligent systems enable rapid manufacturing and optimization of new products, and rapid response to product demands.

Digital control systems to automate process controls, operator tools and service information systems to optimize plant safety and security are within the purview of the IIoT. IoT can also be applied to asset management via predictive maintenance, statistical evaluation, and measurements to maximize reliability. Industrial management systems can be integrated with smart grids, enabling energy optimization. Measurements, automated controls, plant optimization, health and safety management, and other functions are provided by networked sensors.

In addition to general manufacturing, IoT is also used for processes in the industrialization of construction.

In August 2018, Toyota Tsusho began a partnership with Microsoft to create fish farming tools using the Microsoft Azure application suite for IoT technologies related to water management. Developed in part by researchers from Kindai University, the water pump mechanisms use artificial intelligence to count the number of fish on a conveyor belt, analyze the number of fish, and deduce the effectiveness of water flow from the data the fish provide. The FarmBeats project from Microsoft Research that uses TV white space to connect farms is also a part of the Azure Marketplace now.

IoT devices are in use monitoring the environments and systems of boats and yachts. Many pleasure boats are left unattended for days in summer, and months in winter so such devices provide valuable early alerts of boat flooding, fire, and deep discharge of batteries. The use of global internet data networks such as Sigfox, combined with long-life batteries, and microelectronics allows the engine rooms, bilge, and batteries to be constantly monitored and reported to a connected Android & Apple applications for example.

Monitoring and controlling operations of sustainable urban and rural infrastructures like bridges, railway tracks and on- and offshore wind-farms is a key application of the IoT. The IoT infrastructure can be used for monitoring any events or changes in structural conditions that can compromise safety and increase risk. The IoT can benefit the construction industry by cost-saving, time reduction, better quality workday, paperless workflow and increase in productivity. It can help in taking faster decisions and save money with Real-Time Data Analytics. It can also be used for scheduling repair and maintenance activities in an efficient manner, by coordinating tasks between different service providers and users of these facilities. IoT devices can also be used to control critical infrastructure like bridges to provide access to ships. Usage of IoT devices for monitoring and operating infrastructure is likely to improve incident management and emergency response coordination, and quality of service, up-times and reduce costs of operation in all infrastructure related areas. Even areas such as waste management can benefit from automation and optimization that could be brought in by the IoT.

Other examples of large-scale deployments underway include the Sino-Singapore Guangzhou Knowledge City; work on improving air and water quality, reducing noise pollution, and increasing transportation efficiency in San Jose, California; and smart traffic management in western Singapore. Using its RPMA (Random Phase Multiple Access) technology, San Diego-based Ingenu has built a nationwide public network for low-bandwidth data transmissions using the same unlicensed 2.4 gigahertz spectrum as Wi-Fi. Ingenu's "Machine Network" covers more than a third of the US population across 35 major cities including San Diego and Dallas. French company, Sigfox, commenced building an Ultra Narrowband wireless data network in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2014, the first business to achieve such a deployment in the U.S. It subsequently announced it would set up a total of 4000 base stations to cover a total of 30 cities in the U.S. by the end of 2016, making it the largest IoT network coverage provider in the country thus far. Cisco also participates in smart cities projects. Cisco has started deploying technologies for Smart Wi-Fi, Smart Safety & Security, Smart Lighting, Smart Parking, Smart Transports, Smart Bus Stops, Smart Kiosks, Remote Expert for Government Services (REGS) and Smart Education in the five km area in the city of Vijaywada, India.

Significant numbers of energy-consuming devices (e.g. lamps, household appliances, motors, pumps, etc.) already integrate Internet connectivity, which can allow them to communicate with utilities not only to balance power generation but also helps optimize the energy consumption as a whole. These devices allow for remote control by users, or central management via a cloud-based interface, and enable functions like scheduling (e.g., remotely powering on or off heating systems, controlling ovens, changing lighting conditions etc.). The smart grid is a utility-side IoT application; systems gather and act on energy and power-related information to improve the efficiency of the production and distribution of electricity. Using advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) Internet-connected devices, electric utilities not only collect data from end-users, but also manage distribution automation devices like transformers.

Environmental monitoring applications of the IoT typically use sensors to assist in environmental protection by monitoring air or water quality, atmospheric or soil conditions, and can even include areas like monitoring the movements of wildlife and their habitats. Development of resource-constrained devices connected to the Internet also means that other applications like earthquake or tsunami early-warning systems can also be used by emergency services to provide more effective aid. IoT devices in this application typically span a large geographic area and can also be mobile. It has been argued that the standardization that IoT brings to wireless sensing will revolutionize this area.

Living Lab

Another example of integrating the IoT is Living Lab which integrates and combines research and innovation processes, establishing within a public-private-people-partnership. There are currently 320 Living Labs that use the IoT to collaborate and share knowledge between stakeholders to co-create innovative and technological products. For companies to implement and develop IoT services for smart cities, they need to have incentives. The governments play key roles in smart city projects as changes in policies will help cities to implement the IoT which provides effectiveness, efficiency, and accuracy of the resources that are being used. For instance, the government provides tax incentives and cheap rent, improves public transports, and offers an environment where start-up companies, creative industries, and multinationals may co-create, share a common infrastructure and labor markets, and take advantage of locally embedded technologies, production process, and transaction costs. The relationship between the technology developers and governments who manage the city's assets, is key to provide open access to resources to users in an efficient way.

The Internet of Battlefield Things ( IoBT) is a project initiated and executed by the U.S. Army Research Laboratory (ARL) that focuses on the basic science related to the IoT that enhance the capabilities of Army soldiers. In 2017, ARL launched the Internet of Battlefield Things Collaborative Research Alliance (IoBT-CRA), establishing a working collaboration between industry, university, and Army researchers to advance the theoretical foundations of IoT technologies and their applications to Army operations.

The Ocean of Things project is a DARPA-led program designed to establish an Internet of things across large ocean areas for the purposes of collecting, monitoring, and analyzing environmental and vessel activity data. The project entails the deployment of about 50,000 floats that house a passive sensor suite that autonomously detect and track military and commercial vessels as part of a cloud-based network.

There are several applications of smart or active packaging in which a QR code or NFC tag is affixed on a product or its packaging. The tag itself is passive, however, it contains a unique identifier (typically a URL) which enables a user to access digital content about the product via a smartphone. Strictly speaking, such passive items are not part of the Internet of things, but they can be seen as enablers of digital interactions. The term "Internet of Packaging" has been coined to describe applications in which unique identifiers are used, to automate supply chains, and are scanned on large scale by consumers to access digital content. Authentication of the unique identifiers, and thereby of the product itself, is possible via a copy-sensitive digital watermark or copy detection pattern for scanning when scanning a QR code, while NFC tags can encrypt communication.

The IoT's major significant trend in recent years is the explosive growth of devices connected and controlled by the Internet. The wide range of applications for IoT technology mean that the specifics can be very different from one device to the next but there are basic characteristics shared by most.

The IoT creates opportunities for more direct integration of the physical world into computer-based systems, resulting in efficiency improvements, economic benefits, and reduced human exertions.

Ambient intelligence and autonomous control are not part of the original concept of the Internet of things. Ambient intelligence and autonomous control do not necessarily require Internet structures, either. However, there is a shift in research (by companies such as Intel) to integrate the concepts of the IoT and autonomous control, with initial outcomes towards this direction considering objects as the driving force for autonomous IoT. A promising approach in this context is deep reinforcement learning where most of IoT systems provide a dynamic and interactive environment. Training an agent (i.e., IoT device) to behave smartly in such an environment cannot be addressed by conventional machine learning algorithms such as supervised learning. By reinforcement learning approach, a learning agent can sense the environment's state (e.g., sensing home temperature), perform actions (e.g., turn HVAC on or off) and learn through the maximizing accumulated rewards it receives in long term.

IoT intelligence can be offered at three levels: IoT devices, Edge/Fog nodes, and Cloud computing. The need for intelligent control and decision at each level depends on the time sensitiveness of the IoT application. For example, an autonomous vehicle's camera needs to make real-time obstacle detection to avoid an accident. This fast decision making would not be possible through transferring data from the vehicle to cloud instances and return the predictions back to the vehicle. Instead, all the operation should be performed locally in the vehicle. Integrating advanced machine learning algorithms including deep learning into IoT devices is an active research area to make smart objects closer to reality. Moreover, it is possible to get the most value out of IoT deployments through analyzing IoT data, extracting hidden information, and predicting control decisions. A wide variety of machine learning techniques have been used in IoT domain ranging from traditional methods such as regression, support vector machine, and random forest to advanced ones such as convolutional neural networks, LSTM, and variational autoencoder.

In the future, the Internet of things may be a non-deterministic and open network in which auto-organized or intelligent entities ( web services, SOA components) and virtual objects (avatars) will be interoperable and able to act independently (pursuing their own objectives or shared ones) depending on the context, circumstances or environments. Autonomous behavior through the collection and reasoning of context information as well as the object's ability to detect changes in the environment (faults affecting sensors) and introduce suitable mitigation measures constitutes a major research trend, clearly needed to provide credibility to the IoT technology. Modern IoT products and solutions in the marketplace use a variety of different technologies to support such context-aware automation, but more sophisticated forms of intelligence are requested to permit sensor units and intelligent cyber-physical systems to be deployed in real environments.

This section needs attention from an expert in technology. The specific problem is: The information is partially outdated, unclear, and uncited. Requires more details, but not so technical that others won't understand it..WikiProject Technology may be able to help recruit an expert.

IoT system architecture, in its simplistic view, consists of three tiers: Tier 1: Devices, Tier 2: the Edge Gateway, and Tier 3: the Cloud. Devices include networked things, such as the sensors and actuators found in IoT equipment, particularly those that use protocols such as Modbus, Bluetooth, Zigbee, or proprietary protocols, to connect to an Edge Gateway. The Edge Gateway layer consists of sensor data aggregation systems called Edge Gateways that provide functionality, such as pre-processing of the data, securing connectivity to cloud, using systems such as WebSockets, the event hub, and, even in some cases, edge analytics or fog computing. Edge Gateway layer is also required to give a common view of the devices to the upper layers to facilitate in easier management. The final tier includes the cloud application built for IoT using the microservices architecture, which are usually polyglot and inherently secure in nature using HTTPS/ OAuth. It includes various database systems that store sensor data, such as time series databases or asset stores using backend data storage systems (e.g. Cassandra, PostgreSQL). The cloud tier in most cloud-based IoT system features event queuing and messaging system that handles communication that transpires in all tiers. Some experts classified the three-tiers in the IoT system as edge, platform, and enterprise and these are connected by proximity network, access network, and service network, respectively.

Building on the Internet of things, the web of things is an architecture for the application layer of the Internet of things looking at the convergence of data from IoT devices into Web applications to create innovative use-cases. In order to program and control the flow of information in the Internet of things, a predicted architectural direction is being called BPM Everywhere which is a blending of traditional process management with process mining and special capabilities to automate the control of large numbers of coordinated devices.

The Internet of things requires huge scalability in the network space to handle the surge of devices. IETF 6LoWPAN would be used to connect devices to IP networks. With billions of devices being added to the Internet space, IPv6 will play a major role in handling the network layer scalability. IETF's Constrained Application Protocol, ZeroMQ, and MQTT would provide lightweight data transport.

Fog computing is a viable alternative to prevent such a large burst of data flow through the Internet. The edge devices' computation power to analyse and process data is extremely limited. Limited processing power is a key attribute of IoT devices as their purpose is to supply data about physical objects while remaining autonomous. Heavy processing requirements use more battery power harming IoT's ability to operate. Scalability is easy because IoT devices simply supply data through the internet to a server with sufficient processing power.

Decentralized IoT

Conventional IoT is connected via a mesh network and led by a major head node (centralized controller). The head node decides how a data is created, stored, and transmitted. In contrast, decentralized IoT attempts to divide IoT systems into smaller divisions. The head node authorizes partial decision making power to lower level sub-nodes under mutual agreed policy. Performance is improved, especially for huge IoT systems with millions of nodes.

Decentralized IoT attempts to address the limited bandwidth and hashing capacity of battery-powered or wireless IoT devices via lightweight blockchain.

Cyberattack identification can be done through early detection and mitigation at the edge nodes with traffic monitoring and evaluation.

In semi-open or closed loops (i.e. value chains, whenever a global finality can be settled) the IoT will often be considered and studied as a complex system due to the huge number of different links, interactions between autonomous actors, and its capacity to integrate new actors. At the overall stage (full open loop) it will likely be seen as a chaotic environment (since systems always have finality). As a practical approach, not all elements in the Internet of things run in a global, public space. Subsystems are often implemented to mitigate the risks of privacy, control and reliability. For example, domestic robotics (domotics) running inside a smart home might only share data within and be available via a local network. Managing and controlling a high dynamic ad hoc IoT things/devices network is a tough task with the traditional networks architecture, Software Defined Networking (SDN) provides the agile dynamic solution that can cope with the special requirements of the diversity of innovative IoT applications.

The figure of online capable devices grew 31% from 2016 to 2017 to reach 8.4 billion.

In the Internet of things, the precise geographic location of a thing-and also the precise geographic dimensions of a thing-will be critical. Therefore, facts about a thing, such as its location in time and space, have been less critical to track because the person processing the information can decide whether or not that information was important to the action being taken, and if so, add the missing information (or decide to not take the action). (Note that some things in the Internet of things will be sensors, and sensor location is usually important.) The GeoWeb and Digital Earth are promising applications that become possible when things can become organized and connected by location. However, the challenges that remain include the constraints of variable spatial scales, the need to handle massive amounts of data, and an indexing for fast search and neighbour operations. In the Internet of things, if things are able to take actions on their own initiative, this human-centric mediation role is eliminated. Thus, the time-space context that we as humans take for granted must be given a central role in this information ecosystem. Just as standards play a key role in the Internet and the Web, geo-spatial standards will play a key role in the Internet of things.

A solution to "basket of remotes"

Many IoT devices have the potential to take a piece of this market. Jean-Louis Gassée (Apple initial alumni team, and BeOS co-founder) has addressed this topic in an article on Monday Note, where he predicts that the most likely problem will be what he calls the "basket of remotes" problem, where we'll have hundreds of applications to interface with hundreds of devices that don't share protocols for speaking with one another. For improved user interaction, some technology leaders are joining forces to create standards for communication between devices to solve this problem. Others are turning to the concept of predictive interaction of devices, "where collected data is used to predict and trigger actions on the specific devices" while making them work together.

SIoT is different from the original IoT in terms of the collaboration characteristics. IoT is passive, it was set to serve for dedicated purposes with existing IoT devices in predetermined system. SIoT is active, it was programmed and managed by AI to serve for unplanned purposes with mix and match of potential IoT devices from different systems that benefit its users.

IoT devices built-in with sociability will broadcast their abilities or functionalities, and at the same time discovers, navigates and groups with other IoT devices in the same or nearby network for useful service compositions in order to help its users proactively in every day's life especially during emergency.

1. IoT-based smart home technology monitors health data of patients or aging adults by analyzing their physiological parameters and prompt the nearby health facilities when emergency medical services needed. In case emergency, automatically, ambulance of a nearest available hospital will be called with pickup location provided, ward assigned, patient's health data will be transmitted to the emergency department, and display on the doctor's computer immediately for further action.

2. IoT sensors on the vehicles, road and traffic lights monitor the conditions of the vehicles and drivers and alert when attention needed and also coordinate themselves automatically to ensure autonomous driving is working normally. Unfortunately if an accident happens, IoT camera will inform the nearest hospital and police station for help.

1. Internet of things is multifaceted and complicated. One of the main factors that hindering people from adopting and use Internet of things (IoT) based products and services is its complexity. Installation and setup is a challenge to people, therefore, there is a need for IoT devices to mix match and configure themselves automatically to provide different services at different situation.

2. System security always a concern for any technology, and it is more crucial for SIoT as not only security of oneself need to be considered but also the mutual trust mechanism between collaborative IoT devices from time to time, from place to place.

3. Another critical challenge for SIoT is the accuracy and reliability of the sensors. At most of the circumstances, IoT sensors would need to respond in nanoseconds to avoid accidents, injury, and loss of life.

The original idea of the Auto-ID Center is based on RFID-tags and distinct identification through the Electronic Product Code. This has evolved into objects having an IP address or URI. An alternative view, from the world of the Semantic Web focuses instead on making all things (not just those electronic, smart, or RFID-enabled) addressable by the existing naming protocols, such as URI. The objects themselves do not converse, but they may now be referred to by other agents, such as powerful centralised servers acting for their human owners. Integration with the Internet implies that devices will use an IP address as a distinct identifier. Due to the limited address space of IPv4 (which allows for 4.3 billion different addresses), objects in the IoT will have to use the next generation of the Internet protocol ( IPv6) to scale to the extremely large address space required. Internet-of-things devices additionally will benefit from the stateless address auto-configuration present in IPv6, as it reduces the configuration overhead on the hosts, and the IETF 6LoWPAN header compression. To a large extent, the future of the Internet of things will not be possible without the support of IPv6; and consequently, the global adoption of IPv6 in the coming years will be critical for the successful development of the IoT in the future.

ADRC defines an application layer protocol and supporting framework for implementing IoT applications.

LTE-Advanced - High-speed communication specification for mobile networks. Provides enhancements to the LTE standard with extended coverage, higher throughput, and lower latency.

5G - 5G wireless networks can be used to achieve the high communication requirements of the IoT and connect a large number of IoT devices, even when they are on the move. There are three features of 5G that are each considered to be useful for supporting particular elements of IoT: enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine type communications (mMTC) and ultra-reliable low latency communications (URLLC).

This is a list of technical standards for the IoT, most of which are open standards, and the standards organizations that aspire to successfully setting them.

Short name

Long name

Standards under development

Other notes

Connected Home over IP
Project Connected Home over IP

Connected Home over IP (or Project Connected Home over IP) is an open-sourced, royalty-free home automation connectivity standard project which features compatibility among different smart home and Internet of things (IoT) products and software

The Connected Home over IP project group was launched and introduced by Amazon, Apple, Google, Comcast and the Zigbee Alliance on December 18, 2019. The project is backed by big companies and by being based on proven Internet design principles and protocols it aims to unify the currently fragmented systems.

Global Standards One

Standards for UIDs ("unique" identifiers) and RFID of fast-moving consumer goods (consumer packaged goods), health care supplies, and other things

The GS1 digital link standard, first released in August 2018, allows the use QR Codes, GS1 Datamatrix, RFID and NFC to enable various types of business-to-business, as well as business-to-consumers interactions.

Parent organization comprises member organizations such as GS1 US

Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers

Underlying communication technology standards such as IEEE 802.15.4, IEEE P1451-99 (IoT Harmonization), and IEEE P1931.1 (ROOF Computing).

MTConnect Institute

-

MTConnect is a manufacturing industry standard for data exchange with machine tools and related industrial equipment. It is important to the IIoT subset of the IoT.

Open Connectivity Foundation

Standards for simple devices using CoAP (Constrained Application Protocol)

OCF (Open Connectivity Foundation) supersedes OIC (Open Interconnect Consortium)

World Wide Web Consortium

Standards for bringing interoperability between different IoT protocols and platforms such as Thing Description, Discovery, Scripting API and Architecture that explains how they work together.

Homepage of the Web of Things activity at the W3C at https://www.w3.org/WoT/

One of the key drivers of the IoT is data. The success of the idea of connecting devices to make them more efficient is dependent upon access to and storage & processing of data. For this purpose, companies working on the IoT collect data from multiple sources and store it in their cloud network for further processing. This leaves the door wide open for privacy and security dangers and single point vulnerability of multiple systems. The other issues pertain to consumer choice and ownership of data and how it is used. Though still in their infancy, regulations and governance regarding these issues of privacy, security, and data ownership continue to develop. IoT regulation depends on the country. Some examples of legislation that is relevant to privacy and data collection are: the US Privacy Act of 1974, OECD Guidelines on the Protection of Privacy and Transborder Flows of Personal Data of 1980, and the EU Directive 95/46/EC of 1995.

Current regulatory environment:

Data security - At the time of designing IoT companies should ensure that data collection, storage and processing would be secure at all times. Companies should adopt a "defense in depth" approach and encrypt data at each stage.

Data consent - users should have a choice as to what data they share with IoT companies and the users must be informed if their data gets exposed.

Data minimisation - IoT companies should collect only the data they need and retain the collected information only for a limited time.

However, the FTC stopped at just making recommendations for now. According to an FTC analysis, the existing framework, consisting of the FTC Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, and the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, along with developing consumer education and business guidance, participation in multi-stakeholder efforts and advocacy to other agencies at the federal, state and local level, is sufficient to protect consumer rights.

A resolution passed by the Senate in March 2015, is already being considered by the Congress. This resolution recognized the need for formulating a National Policy on IoT and the matter of privacy, security and spectrum. Furthermore, to provide an impetus to the IoT ecosystem, in March 2016, a bipartisan group of four Senators proposed a bill, The Developing Innovation and Growing the Internet of Things (DIGIT) Act, to direct the Federal Communications Commission to assess the need for more spectrum to connect IoT devices.

Approved on 28 September 2018, California Senate Bill No. 327 goes into effect on 1 January 2020. The bill requires " a manufacturer of a connected device, as those terms are defined, to equip the device with a reasonable security feature or features that are appropriate to the nature and function of the device, appropriate to the information it may collect, contain, or transmit, and designed to protect the device and any information contained therein from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure,"

A recent report from the World Bank examines the challenges and opportunities in government adoption of IoT. These include -

Still early days for the IoT in government

Underdeveloped policy and regulatory frameworks

Unclear business models, despite strong value proposition

Clear institutional and capacity gap in government AND the private sector

Inconsistent data valuation and management

Infrastructure a major barrier

Government as an enabler

Most successful pilots share common characteristics (public-private partnership, local, leadership)

Criticism, problems and controversies

The IoT suffers from platform fragmentation, lack of interoperability and common technical standards a situation where the variety of IoT devices, in terms of both hardware variations and differences in the software running on them, makes the task of developing applications that work consistently between different inconsistent technology ecosystems hard. For example, wireless connectivity for IoT devices can be done using Bluetooth, Zigbee, Z-Wave, LoRa, NB-IoT, Cat M1 as well as completely custom proprietary radios - each with its own advantages and disadvantages; and unique support ecosystem.

The IoT's amorphous computing nature is also a problem for security, since patches to bugs found in the core operating system often do not reach users of older and lower-price devices. One set of researchers say that the failure of vendors to support older devices with patches and updates leaves more than 87% of active Android devices vulnerable.

Privacy, autonomy, and control

Concerns about privacy have led many to consider the possibility that big data infrastructures such as the Internet of things and data mining are inherently incompatible with privacy. Key challenges of increased digitalization in the water, transport or energy sector are related to privacy and cybersecurity which necessitate an adequate response from research and policymakers alike.

Writer Adam Greenfield claims that IoT technologies are not only an invasion of public space but are also being used to perpetuate normative behavior, citing an instance of billboards with hidden cameras that tracked the demographics of passersby who stopped to read the advertisement.

The Internet of Things Council compared the increased prevalence of digital surveillance due to the Internet of things to the conceptual panopticon described by Jeremy Bentham in the 18th Century. The assertion was defended by the works of French philosophers Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze. In Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison Foucault asserts that the panopticon was a central element of the discipline society developed during the Industrial Era. Foucault also argued that the discipline systems established in factories and school reflected Bentham's vision of panopticism. In his 1992 paper "Postscripts on the Societies of Control," Deleuze wrote that the discipline society had transitioned into a control society, with the computer replacing the panopticon as an instrument of discipline and control while still maintaining the qualities similar to that of panopticism.

Justin Brookman, of the Center for Democracy and Technology, expressed concern regarding the impact of the IoT on consumer privacy, saying that "There are some people in the commercial space who say, 'Oh, big data - well, let's collect everything, keep it around forever, we'll pay for somebody to think about security later.' The question is whether we want to have some sort of policy framework in place to limit that."

In response to rising concerns about privacy and smart technology, in 2007 the British Government stated it would follow formal Privacy by Design principles when implementing their smart metering program. The program would lead to replacement of traditional power meters with smart power meters, which could track and manage energy usage more accurately. However the British Computer Society is doubtful these principles were ever actually implemented. In 2009 the Dutch Parliament rejected a similar smart metering program, basing their decision on privacy concerns. The Dutch program later revised and passed in 2011.

A challenge for producers of IoT applications is to clean, process and interpret the vast amount of data which is gathered by the sensors. There is a solution proposed for the analytics of the information referred to as Wireless Sensor Networks. These networks share data among sensor nodes that are sent to a distributed system for the analytics of the sensory data.

Security is the biggest concern in adopting Internet of things technology, with concerns that rapid development is happening without appropriate consideration of the profound security challenges involved and the regulatory changes that might be necessary.

Most of the technical security concerns are similar to those of conventional servers, workstations and smartphones. These concerns include using weak authentication, forgetting to change default credentials, unencrypted messages sent between devices, SQL injections, Man-in-the-middle attacks, and poor handling of security updates. However, many IoT devices have severe operational limitations on the computational power available to them. These constraints often make them unable to directly use basic security measures such as implementing firewalls or using strong cryptosystems to encrypt their communications with other devices - and the low price and consumer focus of many devices makes a robust security patching system uncommon.

Rather than conventional security vulnerabilities, fault injection attacks are on the rise and targeting IoT devices. A fault injection attack is a physical attack on a device to purposefully introduce faults in the system to change the intended behavior. Faults might happen unintentionally by environmental noises and electromagnetic fields. There are ideas stemmed from control-flow integrity (CFI) to prevent fault injection attacks and system recovery to a healthy state before the fault.

Internet of things devices also have access to new areas of data, and can often control physical devices, so that even by 2014 it was possible to say that many Internet-connected appliances could already "spy on people in their own homes" including televisions, kitchen appliances, cameras, and thermostats. Computer-controlled devices in automobiles such as brakes, engine, locks, hood and trunk releases, horn, heat, and dashboard have been shown to be vulnerable to attackers who have access to the on-board network. In some cases, vehicle computer systems are Internet-connected, allowing them to be exploited remotely. By 2008 security researchers had shown the ability to remotely control pacemakers without authority. Later hackers demonstrated remote control of insulin pumps and implantable cardioverter defibrillators.

Poorly secured Internet-accessible IoT devices can also be subverted to attack others. In 2016, a distributed denial of service attack powered by Internet of things devices running the Mirai malware took down a DNS provider and major web sites. The Mirai Botnet had infected roughly 65,000 IoT devices within the first 20 hours. Eventually the infections increased to around 200,000 to 300,000 infections. Brazil, Colombia and Vietnam made up of 41.5% of the infections. The Mirai Botnet had singled out specific IoT devices that consisted of DVRs, IP cameras, routers and printers. Top vendors that contained the most infected devices were identified as Dahua, Huawei, ZTE, Cisco, ZyXEL and MikroTik. In May 2017, Junade Ali, a Computer Scientist at Cloudflare noted that native DDoS vulnerabilities exist in IoT devices due to a poor implementation of the Publish-subscribe pattern. These sorts of attacks have caused security experts to view IoT as a real threat to Internet services.

The U.S. National Intelligence Council in an unclassified report maintains that it would be hard to deny "access to networks of sensors and remotely-controlled objects by enemies of the United States, criminals, and mischief makers... An open market for aggregated sensor data could serve the interests of commerce and security no less than it helps criminals and spies identify vulnerable targets. Thus, massively parallel sensor fusion may undermine social cohesion, if it proves to be fundamentally incompatible with Fourth-Amendment guarantees against unreasonable search." In general, the intelligence community views the Internet of things as a rich source of data.

On 31 January 2019, the Washington Post wrote an article regarding the security and ethical challenges that can occur with IoT doorbells and cameras: "Last month, Ring got caught allowing its team in Ukraine to view and annotate certain user videos; the company says it only looks at publicly shared videos and those from Ring owners who provide consent. Just last week, a California family's Nest camera let a hacker take over and broadcast fake audio warnings about a missile attack, not to mention peer in on them, when they used a weak password"

There have been a range of responses to concerns over security. The Internet of Things Security Foundation (IoTSF) was launched on 23 September 2015 with a mission to secure the Internet of things by promoting knowledge and best practice. Its founding board is made from technology providers and telecommunications companies. In addition, large IT companies are continually developing innovative solutions to ensure the security of IoT devices. In 2017, Mozilla launched Project Things, which allows to route IoT devices through a safe Web of Things gateway. As per the estimates from KBV Research, the overall IoT security market would grow at 27.9% rate during 2016-2022 as a result of growing infrastructural concerns and diversified usage of Internet of things.

Governmental regulation is argued by some to be necessary to secure IoT devices and the wider Internet - as market incentives to secure IoT devices is insufficient. It was found that due to the nature of most of the IoT development boards, they generate predictable and weak keys which make it easy to be utilized by Man-in-the-middle attack. However, various hardening approaches were proposed by many researchers to resolve the issue of SSH weak implementation and weak keys.

IoT systems are typically controlled by event-driven smart apps that take as input either sensed data, user inputs, or other external triggers (from the Internet) and command one or more actuators towards providing different forms of automation. Examples of sensors include smoke detectors, motion sensors, and contact sensors. Examples of actuators include smart locks, smart power outlets, and door controls. Popular control platforms on which third-party developers can build smart apps that interact wirelessly with these sensors and actuators include Samsung's SmartThings, Apple's HomeKit, and Amazon's Alexa, among others.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has raised concerns that companies can use the technologies necessary to support connected devices to intentionally disable or " brick" their customers' devices via a remote software update or by disabling a service necessary to the operation of the device. In one example, home automation devices sold with the promise of a "Lifetime Subscription" were rendered useless after Nest Labs acquired Revolv and made the decision to shut down the central servers the Revolv devices had used to operate. As Nest is a company owned by Alphabet ( Google's parent company), the EFF argues this sets a "terrible precedent for a company with ambitions to sell self-driving cars, medical devices, and other high-end gadgets that may be essential to a person's livelihood or physical safety."

Examples of post-sale manipulations include Google Nest Revolv, disabled privacy settings on Android, Sony disabling Linux on PlayStation 3, enforced EULA on Wii U.

Kevin Lonergan at Information Age, a business technology magazine, has referred to the terms surrounding the IoT as a "terminology zoo". The lack of clear terminology is not "useful from a practical point of view" and a "source of confusion for the end user". A company operating in the IoT space could be working in anything related to sensor technology, networking, embedded systems, or analytics. According to Lonergan, the term IoT was coined before smart phones, tablets, and devices as we know them today existed, and there is a long list of terms with varying degrees of overlap and technological convergence: Internet of things, Internet of everything (IoE), Internet of goods (supply chain), industrial Internet, pervasive computing, pervasive sensing, ubiquitous computing, cyber-physical systems (CPS), wireless sensor networks (WSN), smart objects, digital twin, cyberobjects or avatars, cooperating objects, machine to machine (M2M), ambient intelligence (AmI), Operational technology (OT), and information technology (IT). Regarding IIoT, an industrial sub-field of IoT, the Industrial Internet Consortium's Vocabulary Task Group has created a "common and reusable vocabulary of terms" to ensure "consistent terminology" across publications issued by the Industrial Internet Consortium. IoT One has created an IoT Terms Database including a New Term Alert to be notified when a new term is published. As of March 2020, this database aggregates 807 IoT-related terms, while keeping material "transparent and comprehensive."

Despite a shared belief in the potential of the IoT, industry leaders and consumers are facing barriers to adopt IoT technology more widely. Mike Farley argued in Forbes that while IoT solutions appeal to early adopters, they either lack interoperability or a clear use case for end-users. A study by Ericsson regarding the adoption of IoT among Danish companies suggests that many struggle "to pinpoint exactly where the value of IoT lies for them".

As for IoT, especially in regards to consumer IoT, information about a user's daily routine is collected so that the "things" around the user can cooperate to provide better services that fulfill personal preference. When the collected information which describes a user in detail travels through multiple hops in a network, due to a diverse integration of services, devices and network, the information stored on a device is vulnerable to privacy violation by compromising nodes existing in an IoT network.

For example, on 21 October 2016, a multiple distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks systems operated by domain name system provider Dyn, which caused the inaccessibility of several websites, such as GitHub, Twitter, and others. This attack is executed through a botnet consisting of a large number of IoT devices including IP cameras, gateways, and even baby monitors.

Fundamentally there are 4 security objectives that the IoT system requires: (1) data confidentiality: unauthorized parties cannot have access to the transmitted and stored data; (2) data integrity: intentional and unintentional corruption of transmitted and stored data must be detected; (3) non-repudiation: the sender cannot deny having sent a given message; (4) data availability: the transmitted and stored data should be available to authorized parties even with the denial-of-service (DOS) attacks.

Information privacy regulations also require organizations to practice "reasonable security". California's SB-327 Information privacy: connected devices "would require a manufacturer of a connected device, as those terms are defined, to equip the device with a reasonable security feature or features that are appropriate to the nature and function of the device, appropriate to the information it may collect, contain, or transmit, and designed to protect the device and any information contained therein from unauthorized access, destruction, use, modification, or disclosure, as specified." As each organization's environment is unique, it can prove challenging to demonstrate what "reasonable security" is and what potential risks could be involved for the business. Oregon's HB 2395 also "requires [a] person that manufactures, sells or offers to sell connected device] manufacturer to equip connected device with reasonable security features that protect connected device and information that connected device collects, contains, stores or transmits] stores from access, destruction, modification, use or disclosure that consumer does not authorize."

A study issued by Ericsson regarding the adoption of Internet of things among Danish companies identified a "clash between IoT and companies' traditional governance structures, as IoT still presents both uncertainties and a lack of historical precedence." Among the respondents interviewed, 60 percent stated that they "do not believe they have the organizational capabilities, and three of four do not believe they have the processes needed, to capture the IoT opportunity." This has led to a need to understand organizational culture in order to facilitate organizational design processes and to test new innovation management practices. A lack of digital leadership in the age of digital transformation has also stifled innovation and IoT adoption to a degree that many companies, in the face of uncertainty, "were waiting for the market dynamics to play out", or further action in regards to IoT "was pending competitor moves, customer pull, or regulatory requirements." Some of these companies risk being "kodaked" - "Kodak was a market leader until digital disruption eclipsed film photography with digital photos" - failing to "see the disruptive forces affecting their industry" and "to truly embrace the new business models the disruptive change opens up." Scott Anthony has written in Harvard Business Review that Kodak "created a digital camera, invested in the technology, and even understood that photos would be shared online" but ultimately failed to realize that "online photo sharing was the new business, not just a way to expand the printing business."

According to 2018 study, 70-75% of IoT deployments were stuck in the pilot or prototype stage, unable to reach scale due in part to a lack of business planning.

Even though scientists, engineers, and managers across the world are continuously working to create and exploit the benefits of IoT products, there are some flaws in the governance, management and implementation of such projects. Despite tremendous forward momentum in the field of information and other underlying technologies, IoT still remains a complex area and the problem of how IoT projects are managed still needs to be addressed. IoT projects must be run differently than simple and traditional IT, manufacturing or construction projects. Because IoT projects have longer project timelines, a lack of skilled resources and several security/legal issues, there is a need for new and specifically designed project processes. The following management techniques should improve the success rate of IoT projects:

A separate research and development phase

A Proof-of-Concept/Prototype before the actual project begins

Project managers with interdisciplinary technical knowledge

Universally defined business and technical jargon

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The Internet of things ( IoT) describes physical objects (or groups of such objects) with sensors, processing ability, software, and other technologies that connect and exchange data with other devices and systems over the Internet or other communications networks.

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Ring: Amazon aids smart home push by closing video-doorbell firm deal

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Ring: Amazon aids smart home push by closing video-doorbell firm deal

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Amazon's reported $1bn acquisition of video-doorbell maker Ring has closed, giving the company a significant lead over rival Google in the potentially lucrative home security market.

The deal, announced in February and closed today, means Amazon now owns a leader in DIY video security systems. Ring makes popular wireless doorbells with cameras and a range of home security cameras, recently launching a wireless home security system with keypads, contact sensors and motion detectors.

Ring becomes Amazon's second largest acquisition to date, following its $13.7bn deal last year for Whole Foods Market. The financial details of the deal were not released.

Dave Limp, Amazon's head of devices under whose division Ring will now report to, said of the deal: "Ring was doing great. It was growing remarkably year-on-year by any metric, including in the number of customers but also by traditional financial metrics, from already sizeable numbers - so we feel like it was a great deal for both sides."

Amazon marked the close of the deal by slashing the price of Ring's original video doorbell from £159 to £89, a move that it is expected to be the first of many across Ring's product line.

Ring founder and chief executive Jamie Siminoff, who will stay in place under Amazon, said: "I call this deal a milestone and not an acquisition or an exit, because I see it as a step along the road of our mission to provide effective and affordable protection for neighbourhoods.

"Combining with Amazon allows us to come into a large organisation that has a lot of different support mechanisms, and leverage them, be it technology, a service or something else, to scale much faster than we would have been able to do before."

Siminoff said Amazon's scale will enable a price change that will enhance the accessibility of Ring's products and bring them to a wider demographic, but that it would be business as usual for existing Ring customers for the foreseeable future.

Unlike competitors, Ring does not offer AI-assisted video profiling, sticking to a simpler video locker-like approach that simply stores the recorded video for a certain period for customers to manually review at a later date. However, part of the deal will be the transfer of Ring's customer data to Amazon.

Limp said: "At Amazon for 20-plus years have had a policy that the privacy of customer data is a core value, something we share with Ring, so we'll take as stringent a standard we've always had for everything, including customer credit cards, and apply it to Ring's data."

For Ring, Amazon will provide access to a support system, including intellectual property from previous acquisitions such as Blink, that will help it scale. But for Amazon, Ring provides a popular and trusted brand that will aid its push into customer homes, from Alexa devices to in-home deliveries, which is seen as the next big thing in online retail.

Limp said: "Could we have done it ourselves? Sure, we can do anything, probably, over the course of time.

"But you love it when you run into opportunities where you have an incredibly mission-oriented leader and a team that executes extremely well, products that customers absolutely love and are already at scale - Ring checked all those boxes."

Ring will also give Amazon a leg up on competition. Google's Nest division has similar cameras to Ring, and recently launched its own video doorbell and home security system.

With Amazon and Google duking it out over voice assistants, in what is considered the next evolution of computing after the desktop and the smartphone, Ring could be the edge that Amazon needs to keep its ecosystem built around its market-leading Alexa voice assistant out in front.

Ring Video Doorbell 2 review: deal with doorsteppers from your sofa

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Ring: Amazon aids smart home push by closing video-doorbell firm deal

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Amazon's reported $1bn acquisition of video-doorbell maker Ring has closed, giving the company a significant lead over rival Google in the potentially lucrative home security market. The deal, announced in February and closed today, means Amazon now owns a leader in DIY video security systems. Ring makes popular wireless doorbells with cameras and a range of home security cameras, recently launching a wireless home security system with keypads, contact sensors and motion detectors.

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Roomba maker may share maps of users' homes with Google, Amazon or Apple

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Roomba maker may share maps of users' homes with Google, Amazon or Apple

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The maker of the Roomba robotic vacuum, iRobot, has found itself embroiled in a privacy row after its chief executive suggested it may begin selling floor plans of customers' homes, derived from the movement data of their autonomous servants.

"There's an entire ecosystem of things and services that the smart home can deliver once you have a rich map of the home that the user has allowed to be shared," said Colin Angle, iRobot's boss.

That possibility has led to a shift in direction from the company technologically. While all of the housecleaning robots in its range are capable of navigating around a room, only the most advanced machines it makes do so by creating a mental map of the space; its dumber bots simply move almost randomly until they're pretty sure they've covered the whole area.

Angle told Reuters that iRobot, which made Roomba compatible with Amazon's Alexa voice assistant in March, could reach a deal to sell its maps to one or more of the Big Three - Amazon, Apple and Google's Alphabet - in the next couple of years. None of the three commented on this story.

The plans have been received positively by investors, sending iRobot's stock soaring to $102 in mid-June from $35 a year ago and giving it a market value of nearly $2.5bn on 2016 revenue of $660m.

All of iRobot's Roombas use short-range infrared or laser sensors to detect and avoid obstacles, but in 2015 iRobot added a camera, new sensors and software to its flagship 900-series Roomba that gave it the ability to build a map while keeping track of their own location within it.

So-called simultaneous localisation and mapping (Slam) technology enables Roomba, and other higher-end "robo-vacs" made by Dyson and other rivals, to do things like stop vacuuming, head back to its dock to recharge and then return to the same spot to finish the job.

The company's smart home vision has helped bring around some former critics. Willem Mesdag, managing partner of hedge fund Red Mountain Capital - who led an unsuccessful proxy fight against Angle last year and wound up selling his iRobot shares - is now largely supportive of the company's direction.

"I think they have a tremendous first-mover advantage," said Mesdag, who thinks iRobot would be a great acquisition for one of the big three. "The competition is focused on making cleaning products, not a mapping robot."

But consumer advocates have been more concerned by the proposal. Selling data about users' homes raises clear privacy issues, said Ben Rose, an analyst who covers iRobot for Battle Road Research. Customers could find it "sort of a scary thing," he said.

Jim Killock, executive director of the Open Rights Group, concurred, saying: "This is a particularly creepy example of how our privacy can be undermined by companies that want to profit from the information that smart devices can generate about our homes and lives.

"Smart household products may enable companies to obtain information that we consider to be private, such as floor plans of where we live. However, this is not necessarily personal data as protected under data protection law.

"Companies should treat data collected in people's homes as if it is personal data and ensure that explicit consent is sought to gather and share this information. Taking an ethical approach, rather than complying with minimal legal requirements, would build trust with customers."

Angle said iRobot would not sell data without its customers' permission, but he expressed confidence most would give their consent in order to access the smart home functions.

The company's terms of service appear to give the company the right to sell such data already, however. When signing up for the company's Home app, which connects to its smart robots, customers have to agree to a privacy policy that states that it can share personal information with subsidiaries, third party vendors, and the government, as well as in connection with "any company transaction" such as a merger or external investment.

"Maybe that doesn't unnerve you, but it probably should," says Rhett Jones of technology site Gizmodo. "This is all part of the larger quest for a few major companies to hoover up every bit of data about you that they can. Now, they want to know all about your living space.

"Going through the iRobot terms of service, you can see just how much data is already being collected on a daily basis just by clicking like on a Facebook page or visiting a corporate website," Jones adds. "And that data will likely be just as insecure tomorrow as it is today."

At the opposite end of the market, iRobot faces competition from companies not caring at all about smart mapping technology, who are driving down the cost at the entry level. A rising group of mostly cheaper competitors - such as the well-reviewed £229 Eufy RoboVac 11 that's more than £100 cheaper than the comparable Roomba 650 - which are threatening to turn a once-futuristic product into a commoditised home appliance.

An iRobot spokesperson said: "iRobot does not sell data customer data. Our customers always come first. We will never violate our customer's trust by selling or misusing customer-related data, including data collected by our connected products. Right now, the data Roomba collects enables it to effectively clean the home and provides customers with information about cleaning performance. iRobot believes that in the future, this information could provide even more value for our customers by enabling the smart home and the devices within it to work better, but always with their explicit consent."

This piece was amended on 1 August to add a statement from iRobot

Roomba creator responds to reports of 'poopocalypse': 'We see this a lot'

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Roomba maker may share maps of users' homes with Google, Amazon or Apple

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The maker of the Roomba robotic vacuum, iRobot, has found itself embroiled in a privacy row after its chief executive suggested it may begin selling floor plans of customers' homes, derived from the movement data of their autonomous servants.

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Amazon working to fix Alexa after users report random burst of 'creepy' laughter

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Amazon working to fix Alexa after users report random burst of 'creepy' laughter

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The robot wars are coming, and Alexa will have the last laugh.

Amazon acknowledged on Wednesday that some of its Alexa-enabled devices have developed a new skill: creeping out their owners with unexpected and unwarranted bursts of robotic laughter.

"We're aware of this and working to fix it," the company told the Verge.

People began reporting the problem with their "smart" speakers on social media in recent weeks. "So my mom & I are just sitting in the living room, neither of us said a word & our Alexa lit up and laughed for no reason," tweeted one woman, Taylor Wade, on 5 March. "She didn't even say anything, just laughed."

CaptHandlebar (@CaptHandlebar)
So Alexa decided to laugh randomly while I was in the kitchen. Freaked @SnootyJuicer and I out. I thought a kid was laughing behind me. pic.twitter.com/6dblzkiQHp

Another Twitter user reported that Alexa began laughing in the middle of an office conversation: "I asked why she laughed and she said, 'Sorry, I am not sure.'"

Gavin Hightower (@GavinHightower)
Lying in bed about to fall asleep when Alexa on my Amazon Echo Dot lets out a very loud and creepy laugh... there's a good chance I get murdered tonight.

Amazon did not immediately respond to queries from the Guardian about the nature or cause of the apparent bug, but terrifying your customer base is likely a bad move for a company trying to convince people to install a listening device in their bedrooms.

Wade at least had a simple enough solution to the problem, however: "We unplugged her."

After the publication of this article, Amazon announced a fix and apparent explanation for the ghostly laughter. The company suggested in an email that the laughs had occurred "in rare circumstances" because the speaker was picking up a "false positive" for the command "Alexa, laugh".

Amazon will change the command for laughter to "Alexa, can you laugh?" and disable the shorter command. It will also program Alexa to preface its simulacrum of human emotion with the phrase: "Sure, I can laugh."
Topics

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Amazon working to fix Alexa after users report random burst of 'creepy' laughter

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The robot wars are coming, and Alexa will have the last laugh. Amazon acknowledged on Wednesday that some of its Alexa-enabled devices have developed a new skill: creeping out their owners with unexpected and unwarranted bursts of robotic laughter. "We're aware of this and working to fix it," the company told the Verge.

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Beware the smart toaster: 18 tips for surviving the surveillance age

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Beware the smart toaster: 18 tips for surviving the surveillance age

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On the internet, the adage goes, nobody knows you're a dog. That joke is only 15 years old, but seems as if it is from an entirely different era. Once upon a time the internet was associated with anonymity; today it is synonymous with surveillance. Not only do modern technology companies know full well you're not a dog (not even an extremely precocious poodle), they know whether you own a dog and what sort of dog it is. And, based on your preferred category of canine, they can go a long way to inferring - and influencing - your political views.

Just over a week ago, the Observer broke a story about how Facebook had failed to protect the personal information of tens of millions of its users. The revelations sparked a #DeleteFacebook movement and some people downloaded their Facebook data before removing themselves from the social network. During this process, many of these users were shocked to see just how much intel about them the internet behemoth had accumulated. If you use Facebook apps on Android, for example - and, even inadvertently, gave it permission - it seems the company has been collecting your call and text data for years.

It's not me, it's you! So Facebook protested, in the wake of widespread anger about its data-collection practices. You acquiesced to our opaque privacy policies. You agreed to let us mine and monetise the minutiae of your existence. Why are you so upset?

Facebook's surprise at our outrage is not unreasonable. For years, technology companies have faced very little scrutiny as they mushroomed in size and power. Finally, however, the tide is turning. We seem to have reached a watershed moment when it comes to public attitudes towards the use of our private information. We are more aware of the implications of our online behaviour than ever before.

Awareness of our digital footprint is one thing, but what are we to do about it? In the wake of the Facebook revelations, it's clear that we can't all keep clicking as usual if we value our privacy or our democracy. It's still relatively early in the internet era and we are all still figuring it out as we go along. However, best practices when it comes to security and online etiquette are starting to emerge. Here's a guide to some of the new rules of the internet.

1. Download all the information Google has on you

You may well have downloaded your Facebook data already; it has become something of a trend in recent days. Now take a look at what Google has on you. Go to Google's "Takeout" tool and download your data from the multiple Google products you probably use, such as Gmail, Maps, Search and Drive. You'll get sent a few enormous files that contain information about everything from the YouTube videos you have watched, your search history, your location history and so on. Once you've seen just how much information about you is in the cloud, you may want to go about deleting it. I highly recommend deleting your Google Maps history, for a start, unless you are particularly eager to have a detailed online record of everywhere you have ever been. You may also want to stop Google from tracking your location history. Sign in to Google, open Maps, then click on "timeline" in the menu. At the bottom, there's an option to manage your location history.

2. Try not to let your smart toaster take down the internet.

These days you can buy a "smart" version of just about anything. There are connected toasters, which let you personalise your toast settings and notify your phone when your breakfast is ready. There are Bluetooth-enabled forks, which vibrate when you are eating too quickly. There are internet-connected umbrellas, which alert you if it looks like it's going to rain. There are even smart tampons, which let you monitor your flow.

Not only are most of these gadgets unnecessary and expensive, most of them have shoddy security and are a liability. In 2016, for example, hackers created a zombie army of internet-connected devices and used them to take down large parts of the internet, including sites such as Netflix, Facebook, Spotify and the Guardian. So think twice about whether you really need to buy that fancy connected gadget. There's enough to worry about today without having to wonder if your toaster is plotting against you.

3. Ensure your AirDrop settings are dick-pic-proof

If you are an iPhone user, turn off your AirDrop function while in a public place or limit it to contacts. This stops strangers on the train from sending you unsolicited dick pics via AirDrop, which is a thing that actually happens because of course it does.

4. Secure your old Yahoo account

You may have an old email account you never use any more and can't be bothered to delete. That email account is a treasure trove of personal information just waiting to be hacked; indeed, if it's a Yahoo account it was hacked in 2013. You don't need necessarily to delete your old account but you should secure it. Change the password and turn on two-step verification. Make sure you've disconnected any linked services (such as cloud storage) in your settings.

5. 1234 is not an acceptable password

Nor is "password". Nor is "monkey" - which, for some reason, is one of the most popular passwords there is. The most secure passwords are very long ones, so start thinking in terms of "passphrases" instead of password. For example, "nomonkeyisnotagoodpassword" would take a computer 128 undecillion years to crack.

6. Check if you have been pwned

"Pwned" is internet-speak for, among other things, having your email account compromised in a data breach. It's a good idea to check this regularly. Simply go to haveibeenpwned.com, enter your email address, and the website will let you know if and when your details have been compromised so you can take appropriate action such as changing your password.

7. Be aware of personalised pricing

We're all familiar with dynamic pricing - the annoying way in which airline ticket prices fluctuate according to supply and demand. Increasingly, however, we're seeing the rise of "personalised pricing", as retailers analyse our data to gauge how much we're likely to pay and charge us accordingly. Uber, for example, knows that you're more likely to pay surge pricing if your phone battery is about to die - although they claim not to have acted on this information. And Staples has displayed different prices to customers based on their location. It's hard to know just how widespread personalised pricing is as retailers are understandably discreet about it. However, you should assume that it's happening. So, before making a big purchase online you might want to see if using a different device or using the incognito or private mode in your browser has any effect on the price. There are also tools you can download that let you spoof your location. It's the modern equivalent of haggling.

8. Say hi to the NSA guy spying on you via your webcam

Even spooks need a little social interaction.

9. Turn off notifications for anything that's not another person speaking directly to you

Sometimes this will be easy: is it a single-player game? It doesn't need notifications at all. You can find out if you've got more gems, or extra energy - or whatever other fake currency the game hopes you will care about - in your own time, not when it wants to drive your engagement. Other times, this will be harder. Instagram's rubbish - "a famous dog just posted a picture that received 12 likes" - can be turned off, but you'll have to dig down in the settings to find it. Are there exceptions? Sure. The odd breaking news alert never hurt anyone, and maybe you really do want to let Duolingo prod you to practise your Spanish. But if you would be annoyed by a robot calling you up to tell you something, why are you letting it interrupt your thought process in another way?

10. Never put your kids on the public internet

Maybe it's fine to upload pics to a shared (private) photo album, or mention their day in a group DM. But if it's public, Google can find it. And if Google can find it, it's never going away. How are you going to tell your child in 16 years' time that they can't get a drivers' licence because Daddy put a high-res photo of their iris online when they were two and now they trip alarms from here to Mars?

11. Leave your phone in your pocket or face down on the table when you're with friends

Unless you want to signal, repeatedly and obviously: "I would rather be hanging with someone else than you."

12. Sometimes it's worth just wiping everything and starting over

Your phone, your tweets, your Facebook account: all of these things are temporary. They will pass. Free yourself from an obsession with digital hoarding. If you wipe your phone every year, you learn which apps you need and which are just sitting in the background hoovering up data. If you wipe your Facebook account every year, you learn which friends you actually like and which are just hanging on to your social life like a barnacle.

13. An Echo is fine, but don't put a camera in your bedroom

Do we really need to break this one down?

14. Have as many social-media-free days in the week as you have alcohol-free days

This can be zero if you want, but know that we're judging you.

15. Retrain your brain to focus

Save up your longreads using Instapaper or Pocket and read them without distraction. Don't dip in and out of that 4,000-word article on turtles: read it in one go. Or maybe even try a book!

16. Don't let the algorithms pick what you do

You are not a robot, you are a human being, and exercising your own free will is the greatest strength you have. When that YouTube video ends, don't watch the next one that autoplays. When you pick up your phone in the morning, don't just click on the stories at the top of Apple News or Google Now. Exercise choice! Exercise freedom! Exercise humanity!

17. Do what you want with your data, but guard your friends' info with your life

Yes, you should think twice before granting that fun app you downloaded access to your location or your photo library. Do you trust it not to do weird things with your pictures? Do you know it won't track your every movement? But ultimately, those are your decisions, and they are for you to make. But your friends' data isn't yours, it's theirs, and you are a trusted custodian. Don't think twice before authorising access to your address book, or your friends' profiles: think five or six times, and then don't do it.

18. Finally, remember your privacy is worth protecting

You might not have anything to hide (except your embarrassing Netflix history) but that doesn't mean you should be blase about your privacy. Increasingly, our inner lives are being reduced to a series of data points; every little thing we do is for sale. As we're starting to see, this nonstop surveillance changes us. It influences the things we buy and the ideas we buy into. Being more mindful of our online behaviour, then, isn't just important when it comes to protecting our information, it's essential to protecting our individuality.
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We've come a long way since the web was just a fun place to share cat gifs - now it's a place mostly dedicated to finding and selling your personal info. Here's what you need to know in this new era

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Ring Video Doorbell 2 review: deal with doorsteppers from your sofa 

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Ring Video Doorbell 2 review: deal with doorsteppers from your sofa 

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The Ring Video Doorbell 2 adds the convenience of a front-door intercom to pretty much any home, and with minimal DIY skills required, meaning it's never been easier to get rid of doorsteppers.

There have long been wifi-connected doorbells, for those envious of flat-dwelling friends with video intercoms adding that extra barrier between them and the outside world, but most of them require some sort of wiring to install.

The Ring Video Doorbell 2 has a rechargeable battery, which means there's no need to wire it into the mains or a low voltage circuit. But is a rechargeable video doorbell actually any good?

What is it?

The Ring Video Doorbell 2 is essentially a big battery-powered doorbell with a camera in the top of it, which video calls your phone or tablet when someone presses the button. It means you can answer the door from pretty much anywhere you have a phone and an internet connection.

There's also an optional Chime or Chime Pro, the latter of which extends your wifi network to the doorbell, should you want something to make a noise in your hall, and even a solar charger to help the battery last longer.

Setup

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Charge the battery via a standard microUSB cable. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

Setting it up is pretty straightforward: charge the removable and rechargeable battery with a microUSB cable, screw it into the wall and slot in the battery pack. In the box is a masonry drill bit, screws and wall plugs. There are also two different mounting plates, which can angle the doorbell up, down, left, right or a combination of two to give it a better view of the door. I didn't need them, so after a quick bit of drilling it was screwed in place.

Using the Ring app you attach the doorbell to your wifi network - or the doorbell to the chime and the chime to the router - and within a few minutes you've got your doorbell up and working.

You get the choice of all-black or a black and silver look to the doorbell with a removable faceplate, and a security screw to keep the battery in place protecting access to the mounting screws.

If you want to you can wire in the doorbell, and you can also connect it to an existing wired chime if you have one. I didn't have either.

Using it

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The wide-angle view from the camera lets you keep an eye on your car, door and the people that call. Photograph: Ring

The doorbell monitors movement within a pre-defined area alerting you when someone walks near your door but doesn't press the doorbell. I was surprised by just how many people walk anywhere near my door, so in the end I turned the alerts off.

When someone comes calling, a ring around the button lights-up, the doorbell emits a ring tone and an alert pops up on your phone. If you have the optional chime attached it also rings at the same time.

There's no lag between pushing the button and the chime and alert going off. Tapping on the alert takes you to a view from the camera with the option to decline or answer. Answering allows you to speak through the doorbell to the caller, which works surprisingly well. You have to speak up a bit for them to hear you, but you can hear them as clear as day, even on a noisy street.

Access to the doorbell can be shared with multiple people, with their own separate Ring accounts, which means everyone can get alerted when there's someone at the door.

Smart without being rubbish

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The Chime Pro is a wifi extender and door chime in one. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

The Ring Video Doorbell 2 is one of those rare Internet of Things devices that actually just works and isn't rubbish at being the non-smart thing it replaces. It works great just as a regular wireless doorbell, particularly if you've got a chime installed. But being able to see through the camera and speak to callers is brilliant.

Rejecting cold callers from the comfort of your sofa is satisfying, as it removes that awkward moment where you have to shut the door in someone's face to get them to go away.

It's also useful for keeping tabs on your home. At any time you can see through the camera, and if you have the optional Ring cloud subscription, review the video from any motion alert or ring. I was amazed by just how many people came up to the door, and I appreciated the peace of mind that anyone who fancies breaking into my home is automatically caught on camera.

It even works really well in the dark, with IR lighting up your doorstep like black-and-white daylight.

There are downsides to being constantly contactable through your front door. When you have a particularly persistent cold caller, who apparently thinks your house contains something he wants, and won't take no for an answer, calling several times while you are at work and uttering what sound like secret pass-phrases that clearly mean nothing to you, it's difficult to ignore the door. At least you can turn off the ring notification, as I did.

Observations

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The Ring app is easy to use and gives instant access to the live feed from the camera or recorded videos and events from the Ring cloud storage account. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

When you view the live feed the button lights up to show people they're on video

The doorbell plays nice with other IoT devices such as Samsung's SmartThings hub, so you can include it in routines

It works particularly well with the Amazon Echo Show, just say "Alexa, show me the front door" to see the live feed within a few seconds

Videos are stored for 60 days with a Ring Video Recording Plan, and can be downloaded

The battery lasts about a month with an average of 25 motion alerts a day and regular use of the live view, and takes a good four hours or so to charge from almost flat - best done overnight

The solar charging mount extended battery life by around five to 10 days during the British winter and should do more during the summer

Price

The Ring Video Doorbell 2 costs £179, the optional Chime costs £29 and the Chime Pro costs £49. The solar charger costs $49 (£40). The Ring Video Recording subscription costs £2.50 a month or £24.99 a year.

For comparison, Google's Nest Hello video doorbell costs $229 in the US, but is not yet available in the UK.

Verdict

The Ring Video Doorbell 2 is one of those rare smart home devices that just works and works at least as well as the "dumb" equivalent, but with much more capability.

It acts as another barrier between you and the outside world, and works perfectly well simply as a video doorbell and impromptu live feed camera without a monthly cloud subscription. With the Ring Video Recording cloud subscription it also brings peace of mind that anyone who comes calling or burgling through the front door will be caught on camera. I found it particularly reassuring being able to keep an eye out while on holiday and at work, and that it acts as a deterrent to those casing your front door.

The battery power means that it's also easy to fit to almost any door with very little in the way of DIY skill required - there's no wiring necessary, just a bit of drilling for which the drill bit, wall plugs and screws are included.

Ring doesn't do any facial recognition or similar, so those seeking more advanced features will have to look elsewhere, but as a simple-to-use video doorbell that you can fit yourself in minutes, the Video Doorbell 2 ticks all the boxes.

Pros: easy to install and set up, solid app, great as basic doorbell, great as a camera from your door, attractive, no wiring required, lots of accessories and options

Cons: battery needs charging once a month, can't use local storage for video, quite large for some door frames, expensive for a doorbell

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The optional solar charger helps prolong battery life and makes for an attractive back plate for the doorbell. Photograph: Samuel Gibbs for the Guardian

Other reviews

Samsung SmartThings Hub review: an Internet of Things to rule them all?

Nest Learning Thermostat third-gen: the simple, effective heating gadget

Amazon Echo Show review: smart speaker with a screen has great potential

Topics

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Ring Video Doorbell 2 review: deal with doorsteppers from your sofa

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The Ring Video Doorbell 2 adds the convenience of a front-door intercom to pretty much any home, and with minimal DIY skills required, meaning it's never been easier to get rid of doorsteppers.