IOT. Internet of Things. It's a world where people competitively tries to make their surrounding "smarter". It deems that everything -- every device, system, things -- has to talk to each other via the invisible connection which is the internet. It can't get anymore exciting than this era........ Or is it?

I think there's a strong trend in which when we talk about IOT projects, it always comes down to the type of environment that we're most familiar with: our very own personal living space. HOME. Everything starts with the notion of making things in our house become smarter. We wanted to control things so badly with our smartphone. We want our smartphone to 'talk' to our lightbulbs, heater, bed/mattress, even our grandma's crockpot. In my opinion, we ARE already living in the future. Sometimes -- well, most of the time -- I got my mind blown by this fact alone. Which is why I'm interested to learn more about IOT this Fall.

Well anyway, here are two examples of connected objects:

All the Smart/Connected Lighting System nowadays, e.g.: Philips Hue, Osram Lightify, LIFX, Lutron Caseta, GE Link, OORT Smart Bluetooth Bulb, Misfit Bolt, and so on.

These are pretty much categorized as the 'first wave' of IOT projects. When Philips announced Hue on 2012, I was pretty much skeptical because of the high price tag that comes along with it. But now, 3 years later, things got cheaper, and competition is getting more and more intense and customers are faced with so many different options to choose from. The trend is also moving toward the adaptation of using BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) to make Smart Bluetooth Bulb. I personally haven't tried this one, so I can't really say much about it.

Smart Home Security System such as Canary, Kibbi, Homeboy, etc.

The only reason I got reminded of this is the fact that I see their advertisements daily during my subway commute. It's everywhere. Insane. But eventually it made me curious so one day I actually tried to look it up online and see how it works. It's pretty cool actually. It has 1080p HD video camera with safety sensors that track everything from motion, temperature and air quality to vibration and sound. These became data inputs that's used for giving out notification directly to your phone.

Also, a bonus: I would like to give honorable mention to one of my favorite IOT project ever, "Little Printer". http://littleprinter.com/ It's basically a web-connected thermal printer that can print anything for you. It's light, beautiful, and fun! It's also part of my precedent last year when I made a simple Fortune Teller machine using Raspberry Pi & Python. Too bad right now they discontinued the project and already closed the backend service.

- Footnotes -
My interest: creative coding, internet, data visualization, and actually make some cool stuff.