Thursday, February 9, 2012

Remember how we used to set alarm clocks at a fixed time? And browse web sites? Remember?

Everyone is familiar with pointing their web browser at a web site that is powered by several web servers so that they can locate information, data, go shopping, banking, do social media stuff, etc. 

Imagine, in the future you will be able to point your browser at a person and get information about the person including health status – blood pressure, heart rate. Or point at a house and get the status of devices in the home from the security system, heating and media and just as important will be able to control them.  The Internet of Things goes beyond this, it will not just be people interacting with devices but the devices interacting with each other. 
 
Imagine an intelligent alarm clock that looks at your calendar and understands where you need to travel to first thing the next day, it monitors traffic and weather conditions and wakes you up at the right time to ensure you get to you first appointment on time.

Imagine devices that consume a lot of energy, listening for changes in the price of energy and turning on when the rate is cheap and off when the price goes up enabling efficient use of the grid.

Imagine emergency services drawing up at a building that is on fire and using an augmented reality display to determine where hazardous chemicals are located on site, where people are located and what their health condition is.

What will the world look like in 5 years time? It will be a lot more event-oriented. With the proliferation of devices the internet will evolve.

To connect smart devices with each other to the enterprise, you would need a reliable but lightweight messaging protocol. Message Queue Telemetry Transport (MQTT) is an open message protocol that enables the transfer of telemetry-style data in the form of messages from pervasive devices, along high latency or constrained networks, to a server or small message broker. Pervasive devices may range from sensors and actuators, to mobile phones, embedded systems on vehicles, or laptops and full scale computers. This extremely lightweight publish/subscribe messaging transport is useful for connections with remote locations where a small code footprint is required and/or network bandwidth is at a premium.

Did you know that Facebook is using MQTT for their smartphone messaging app launched in late 2011. More details on that are here:
https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-engineering/building-facebook-messenger/10150259350998920

IBM's implementation of MQTT in WebSphere MQ allows for access to remote devices with your messaging infrastructure running on MQ. More details are here:  
http://www-01.ibm.com/software/integration/wmqfamily/telemetry/

The most exciting news is that MQTT is now taken to a standards body. For details on the submission to Eclipse of MQTT Java and C client code, see here:  

Every company, organization, city, nation, and natural systems like rivers and weather are becoming instrumented, interconnected and intelligent. This is leading to new savings and efficiency—and perhaps more importantly—new possibilities for progress. 

We live in such exciting times!

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