If you look around, you'll find at least one thing that has the ability to connect to the internet. It may be your phone. It may be a laptop, your TV, or even your fridge.

Internet of things generally refers to the collection of all those devices. But now, you can argue that anything that has the ability to connect to the internet and collect and share data is a part of internet of things or IoT in short.

Now the question here usually is what is IoT? Why do we need it? How does it help us? How does it work and many more questions of the sort.

So, what is IoT?

IoT refers to the collection of all those devices that have the ability to connect to the internet and collect and share data. Hence the name internet of things. So basically, we have a device that collects data from its surroundings, using sensors and actuators and sends this collected data to the internet where the processing of that data can happen.

There are many devices that can be included in this classification. Examples can be phones laptops, watches, refrigerators, washing machines, cars and even homes.

Homes themselves can be a part of IoT too. Most IoT devices have the word smart at the start of their names, smart phones, smart watches, smart TVs, smart refrigerators and smart homes.

So, why do we need IoT? How does it help us?

It helps makes our lives easier and more comfortable. If we take an example, smartphones have more use cases than we can list here without going on for hours. It can call, it allows us to watch movies. It allows us to connect to the internet, interact with strangers, shop things.

But let's take a better example for our understanding. Smart house. A smart house has many different features that we can talk about. One of the features is automatic lights, where the lights automatically detect your presence in the room and get switched on. They can also be voice activated. You can say activate and they'll get switched on. It may have next generation security to keep your house safe. It might only allow authorized people to enter and locks up everything when you leave. Then it has entertainment management, for using devices, such as Google home, Amazon echo to keep track of your chores, to play movies and songs, etc. It also keeps track of temperature management. The house automatically adjusts the temperature based on the surrounding climate.

Now, this is at an individual level. At a larger scale, it benefits the society as a whole. In industries such as healthcare, it has many use cases. It allows for remote interaction between patients and doctors. So, if a patient has any sort of a deadly disease, the doctor doesn't necessarily have to come in close contact to help the patient out. Doctors make amazing decisions and based on the time and the data they've been given. But computers can sometimes make better decisions. Combining doctors and computers can give us the best diagnosis possible.

Farming has been one of the industries that has stayed with us since the beginning of human civilization itself. Right now, is the correct time to improve upon our traditional methods and shift into modern farming to provide food for our ever-growing population. Smart technologies have definitely helped us increase the productivity. Through new devices like smart tractors and analysis devices that will help us get a better data analysis of a soil.

Now the manufacturing industry has taken IoT with open arms. It already has automation replacing many menial jobs. IoT did not only increase the interactivity, but also boosted the efficiency and production as well.

In education, better methods to teach children are already being implemented that are in conjunction with IoT. A good example is Augmented Reality. Being used in some classes to give students a better experience of real-life animals and even extinct animals. So, having IoT will not only be beneficial to us individually, but also be beneficial to us as a society.

So, how does IoT work?

There are basically four layers to it.

The first layer is sensing/device layer which is basically the hardware part of IoT. This is basically an embedded device. It has sensors and actuators that collect the data from surroundings based on specific function. For example, temperature sensors, atmospheric pressure sensors and light sensors. They basically collect all the data and they give it to the embedded device.

Now after the data has been collected, it goes to the connectivity layer, usually to the cloud, using the internet. This connection is generally made through one of the methods like Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, cellular, RFID or NFC.

After that comes to data processing layer. Now the data, once it reaches the cloud is subjected to data analysis. Different types of algorithms are used based on the type of data collected to get meaningful insights and patterns. Then a decision is made based on the insights. Once the processing is complete, the result of the decision is conveyed to the IoT device and changes are made.

User Interface/Application Layer, is the last layer. It's basically the front-end to all the back-end processing, which are included the previous levels. Now a good example to explain this process would be a smart fridge. The sensors in the smart fridge collect data from the surrounding. They see what the temperature is and what kind of item is being stored inside the fridge. Once it collects all of this data, it sends it to a central cloud where the processing happens based on this collected data. The system decides whether to keep the temperature or to change it and we can see the result of this on the interactive screen of the fridge.

It would not be crazy to see that we may live in a future, like how it is depicted in sci-fi movies. A future in which everything we use is connected to the internet, where it interacts with a central cloud, where all of our data is being collected and being utilized to make our lives and our society a much better place.

Disclaimer : The views and opinions expressed in the article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to the author's employer, organisation, committee or other group or individual.