People. Devices. Smart objects. Things. All of these create data, or signals. Signals, and responding to them in intelligent ways, are what drives behaviour. We’ll look at how the Internet of Things is, in fact, made up of signals – and some of the technology considerations to think about. Presentation from Thingmonk 2013

1. The IoT is Made of Signals
People, things, protocols…
and how we can make it all work…
!
Andy Piper @andypiper
People. Devices. Smart objects. Things. All of
these create data, or signals. Signals, and
responding to them in intelligent ways, are
what drives behaviour. We’ll look at how the
Internet of Things is, in fact, made up of signals
– and some of the technology considerations
to think about.

2. Once upon a time
(ok, well, 2008.)
James mentioned Matt Biddulph’s masterly “made
of messages” talk to me when we were discussing
my participation at Thingmonk.
If you’ve never been through these 18 slides, it is
worth your time.
http://www.slideshare.net/carsonified/dopplr-itsmade-of-messages-matt-biddulph-presentation
James also gave me the useful guidance “go
meta”…

3. What is a Signal?
…a function that conveys information about the behavior or
attributes of some phenomenon…
In the physical world, any quantity exhibiting variation in
time or variation in space (such as an image) is potentially a
signal that might provide information on the status of a
physical system, or convey a message between observers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Signal_(electrical_engineering)
Back to basics.
What is a signal and why is the Internet of Things
all about signals?
Well, signals are really important. They surround us.
Like the Force, they permeate our environment.

4. The Internet is made of… People?
We’re here at an event about The IoT
So what about the internet… apart from being a
network created by academia, the military, and
powered by innovations from the porn industry?

5. People are social
One of the reasons the internet has become a
social space is that humans are, fundamentally, a
social species. We like to share.

6. We’ve spent centuries developing communications
technologies to share our experiences.
The pace of innovation has increased.
We’ve gone from days to milliseconds for point-topoint communications.

7. conveying a message
between observers
The power of Broadcast
But broadcast has always been instantaneous
between OBSERVERS.
We can think about smoke signals in this context.
You can choose to listen… or not.

8. Morse
From around 1836, US and UK scientists began to
develop what we now know as Morse Code
They had a telegraph system, with limited
bandwidth, and chose to develop a method for
sending messages via clicks (onto paper), and later
bleeps and lights.
There wasn’t one standard initially
Did you know, Morse code stopped being used by
most int’l agencies in 1999… sad.

9. Chirp.io
the new Morse?
Chirp.io is a niche mobile app for audio messaging
- it is one-to-many; with no security; anyone can
see or hear it. Reminds me a lot of Morse!
(looking forward to the new Chirpino board!)

10. What can we learn here?
OK so there are point-to-point and broadcast
methods of communication, and the internet is
made of people.

11. Connections are good
… synchronicity is tough?
Connections enable sharing
Data and protocols can be complicated
In particular, we need to agree on protocol
A protocol is like a handshake
Data is like a language

12. HTTP is for documents
is it good for signals?
So let’s talk protocols. One of them is really common…
HTTP was basically built for request-response situations
“I want a document in my web browser now"
We’ve bent and massaged it and added features, we’ve even
added WebSockets on the principle that realtime is good.
But that’s not network efficient, or simple.
Many methods. Verbose. Request-response when I want to
send just power and temperature values. 1-1
Point-to-point DOES. NOT. SCALE.
As someone said recently at the Campus IoT Accelerator event
- “HTTP is not fit for purpose for the IoT”

13. Signals ~ Messages
Biddulph’s Theorem?
!
“A message is an atomic unit of
data that can be transmitted on a
channel.”
Back to basics again. Let’s think of Signals as
Messages.
So what we have is a USEFUL piece of data.
Broadcasting those signals to interested observers
is USEFUL.
Combining those signals —> amplification

14. The Internet of Signals is a feedback loop
Things
Signal
Data
Analysis
People
In the end, the Internet of People AND Things /
Signals is all about DATA
For Data to be useful, we want to analyse and reuse it in a reasonable period of time (or the Data is
archived, or wasted)

15. Protocols diversify
HTTP, MQTT, DDS, AMQP,
STOMP, WebSocket… what next?
The other week at an “IoT accelerator” event at
Google Campus a number of us here heard that
Standards are vital, and that if we all only just went
and agreed to use the One Platform to Rule Them
All, we would be fixed.
But as Rick Bullotta said this morning - there won’t
be one standard

16. MQTT
broadcast, combine, learn
MQTT (and MQTT-SN) becoming a standard (at
OASIS)
Importantly - more important than standards
process - Eclipse is hosting an Interoperability
Testing Workshop at EclipseCon.

17. Integration is inevitable
Eclipse Ponte & node-red
I’ve been working in IT for 20+ years
I’ve seen the wheel turn through EAI to SOA to IoT
Standards are useful
Usefulness is more useful - APIs
KISS - Protocol and Data! —> this is why MQTT is
so powerful in my opinion

18. In 2006 Adam Greenfield published Everyware talked about Ubicomp
Computing power embedded in everything
The Minority Report gesture-based, customised
and personalised UI becoming a reality
Today, the building blocks to enable this are more
real than ever before

19. Final thoughts
Some fun tweets

20. Final thoughts
Some fun tweets

21. Thanks - Creative Commons photography
•
http://www.flickr.com/photos/henrytapia/2893729684/
•
http://www.flickr.com/photos/badwsky/532871465/
•
http://www.flickr.com/photos/12659480@N03/4816255109/
•
http://www.flickr.com/photos/qubodup/4112788560/
•
http://www.flickr.com/photos/benbrown/271016535/
•
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35468148654@N01/416810/
•
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8415439@N08/8498659842/
Thanks to Matt Biddulph for inspiration, and also to
Patrick Bergel for interesting thoughts based off
Chirp.io!