What is IoT? IoT Applications

What are IoT Applications?

If you haven’t heard of this before, be advised that you will be hearing it a lot over the next few years. IoT is the abbreviation for the “Internet of Things”.  In a nutshell IoT applications are they way for machines to talk to each other through wireless networks to deliver real-time information. It covers Machine to Machine, Mobile to Machine, or Machine to Mobile.

The Advantages of IoT

The advantages are many but the main ones included more efficient use of real-time data enabling managers to make decisions, monitor and allocate resources. Just think, if there is something wrong in your Server room, you could find out immediately, and you can fix it. The alternative is not finding out until much later, potentially losing data and increasing costs of employee downtime.

“Ping” is a term used more and more and is one of those behind the scenes benefits of IoT. A Ping is a way to test that devices are still working correctly. Put simply, you send a message to another machine and expect a response within a certain amount of time. If you don’t receive your pingback then something is wrong and procedures are pre-programed for stage 2 troubleshooting to commence. Stage 2 troubleshooting could include another ping then an automated sms sent to a manager warning of a problem. It’s a lot more complicated than this – the ping measures the time of the entire trip, and records any packet lost plus more – but that’s the general gist.

The end result of all these improvements is better customer service and hopefully a better customer experience.

IoT Applications across Industries

Every day a new IoT application is added to the list of seemly endless improvements able to be made to people lives.  The area of health and safety particularly has seen great improvements with less bodies doing dangerous work and more machines taking over materials.

Examples showing how businesses are using IoT within different industries as follows:

Medical Industry IoT

• Handheld Equipment
• Medical Monitoring Devices
• Patient Tracking
• Telemedicine

Mining Applications IoT

• Data Transmission
• Equipment Tracking
• Gas/oil levels
• Remote monitoring
• Wireless communication

Farming IoT

• Lifestock tracking
• Equipment Tracking
• Remote Monitoring
• Wireless Communication

POS/Vending Machine IoT

• Automatic vending and credit card/mobile payment to increase sales
• Improved route and replenishment planning
• Point of Sale equipment
• Remote monitoring to have optimum stock in each machine
• Remotely change pricing

Smart Homes/Cities IoT

• Access Points

Parking & Public Transportation IoT

• Smart Lighting & Smart Metering
• Security
• Traffic Monitoring
• Transportation
• Container Tracking

For an application within the real world, check out M2M manufacturer Robustel’s recent installation of their M1000-U4L LTE modem across a city-wide transport system including bus’, trams, trains and ferry’s.  Robustel was selected because of its sturdiness, network compatibility and seamless connectivity performance.

Find out more HERE.