170 years ago, the gold rush began in these lands. California was filled with adventurers, explorers and all kinds of people from many parts of the United States and the world who came to seek their fortune in a business that could bring in large amounts of money in a short time, with not a little work, of course, because those were difficult times, with very basic technologies, but the promise was very bright.
That gold rush lasted until 1855, leaving many rich people, but also many people who did not achieve what they saw that others did: economic success did not come to everyone, but it left in California the labor force that later dedicated itself to many other things that helped build the California of today; the sixth economy in the world, the most populated state in the union. Today, a century and a half later, a fever similar to that of that time is felt in California, that of bytes, which is not only seen in the large technology companies that have been born and grown for more than 20 years, but also in everything that happens around the digital world. New possibilities are increasingly hanging on this new world that still does not allow us to see in all its dimensions what it can become in 50 years from now.
Internet of Things World Convention 2018
The IoT World organized by Knect365, https://knect365.com/, a company specialized in organizing this type of events around the world, is a hive of people talking about topics as dense as they are unknown to most people, even for the most technological; They talk about the development of construction projects for cities, companies, houses, cars and all types of devices that in short build intelligent and connected environments 24 hours a day. It is like having found within the vein of bytes another great vein of business possibilities related to the Internet but this time nothing to do with software, or with computers, at least directly. They are elements and things, connected to the web, processing every second, sounds, images, thermal and light sensations and all types of information to help predict situations and prescribe actions in real time. Applications in transportation, security, health, and all possible situations in daily life. Until a few decades ago, the Internet of Things (IoT) was part of science fiction; Today it is a reality whose limit is practically creativity to solve existing problems.
Getting the gist of this is complex, but it specifically has to do with three pillars: Machine Learning, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Deep Learning. These are the basic components of the IoT and each of these components is as wide as it is deep, but it has to do with processing the data collected in any IoT application. The hardware, as a basic component of any of these developments, is the vehicle, the software is the manager of the information that is processed, but most importantly, what makes the difference, are the sensors that receive the “input” from the environments, that is, temperature, movements, sounds, blood pressure, wind speed, atmospheric pressure and even smells and colors or the recognition of things.
Good news for developers, data scientists or computer engineers who want to experiment is that many of the components, platforms and hardware are open source and this time, you don't necessarily have to be in California to be part of the byte rush, everything is on the web. The complexity is great, but the opportunities are there, just like in the gold rush era, the limit is imagination and creativity. The question is: What problem can you help solve?
This IoT fever is in some way closely related to California, but this time the vein is global and surely the pioneers will be able to get something interesting out of this.
Drupal 8 has native integration with IoT and is an excellent alternative for managing solutions that require administration of applications that can be part of an IoT ecosystem. In another article dedicated to Drupal we will talk about this topic.
Written by Jairo Pinzón, CEO SeeD EM Experts in Drupal development in Colombia