Art Illustration
“Internet of Things (IoT)”, I’m sure you’ve heard this term pretty often lately, but what does it mean exactly? The Internet of Things refers to the rapidly growing network of connected devices that have the ability to transmit data.
Yes, but what they are exactly? IoT products principally include smartphones, laptops, smartwatches, smart gadgets, smart and digitalized vehicles and almost all of these devices are used majorly today in our daily life. These IoT devices help the expansion of internet connection beyond the usual standard devices like computers, laptops, smartphones, etc. The Internet of Things devices is able to communicate or interact over the internet smoothly due to the fact that is integrated with high definition technology and can even be controlled remotely when required.
The Internet of Things products are so popular nowadays, that as a matter of fact, their quantity has surpassed a huge number of humans on this planet. We are approximately around 7.62 billion humans on our planet, but to your surprise, by the year 2021 with an increasing graph of IoT devices, there may be around 20 billion IoT smart devices up and running with an increase in the demand of 5g network, that most suppliers are working on it. Furthermore, Business Insider Intelligence forecasts that there will be more than 64 billion IoT devices installed around the world by 2026.
This means that the production and usage of the Internet of Things devices are increasing very rapidly day by day. The market for IoT devices is expanding rapidly every day and becoming more popular with the drastic increase in the number of users who use them daily.
source Statista
But how does these IoT work and what does makes them smart devices?
To transform a normal device into IoT smart device it basically depends on two things:
The device must have the capability to connect with the internet in any way.
The device need to be integrated with technology like sensors, functional software, some inbuilt technology which support network connections and also actuators.
When both these functionalities are combined together an IoT smart device is formed.
IoT Device Lifecycle
Advantages of IoT Devices
Saves a lot of time
Save more money by reducing manual task
Increased efficiency
Better quality of life
More automation and control
Easier to operate
More monitoring features.
Challenges on Designing an IoT Devices
Now, let’s try to look a bit from a different engineering perspective. We may see some other characteristics on most of those IoT devices. Two of them are “mobile” and “wirelessly connected”. Look like two simple words, but also come with challenges. When we start to talk about Reliability, we may want to discuss further the following topics:
When the product is inside a moving vehicle, will it be able to maintain its functionality? Will it lose connectivity due to vibration? Will the display be flickering? Can I charge the battery inside the moving vehicle?
Will the product be able to survive at low temperatures during winter? Or when it is left inside the vehicle during summer in the middle of the day? May the battery explode?
How if I drop it? Is it going to break?
All the above scenarios will need to be taken into account during the design stage. But it doesn’t matter how to advance and sophisticated the design process, it will not be able to remove the prototype validation and testing stage. To ensure the reliability of the product, a series of reliability tests need to be performed by using a high-quality environmental testing machine.
