Scenario

In 5-10 years time, the average homeowner will say:

Internet devices? What's the fuss? My home is fully networked - I think it is a mixture of wireless and power cable network, but I'm not sure. Anyway, whatever I buy nowadays seems to connect with the rest of the house with no problems. Just today I bought a new alarm clock for my daughter, and when I switched it on it set itself to the right time, and set its alarm time to the time her old clock had before it broke. Of course, it won't go off until my daughter returns from holidays - you wouldn't expect modern things to waste power, would you?

Connectivity

• "Everything" is becoming connected
• The cars in the Grand Prix are all monitored by wireless connection to the pits, and all information is sent to the home base e.g. for Ferrari, to Italy
• Looking Good Electronics (LGe) advertise an airconditioner that can be controlled by mobile phone, and a fridge with a Web browser
• Burglar alarm systems are often connected to local police stations
• Cars can use GPS (global positioning system) to locate themselves, and software can show (and tell) route maps
• Infra-red enabled mobile phones can communicate with PCs with an IR port, so your PC can make phone calls
• Newer mobile phones contain Bluetooth chips to connect to other devices such as Bluetooth headphones
• WAP enabled mobile phones can connect to Web sites

Internet Connectivity

• Connections between things will allow connections to the internet
• The internet isn't special, but it is a unifying connection mechanism - if everything can talk internet protocols, then everything can talk to everything else
• This unit is about some evolving technologies
• It does not describe many existing systems, but looks at the technologies that may be used in the next few years
• There is now an IEEE journal "Pervasive Computing" dedicated to ubiquitous connected devices

Connection Components

To make a device talk to the internet, several things are needed

• Embedded processors in the device
• Embedded software in the processors
• Maybe an embedded Operating System
• A programmatic interface to the device
• A means of establishing an internet connection

Device to Service

Once a programmatic interface to the device and an internet connection are in place, then

• A device just becomes a software service
• There must be ways of advertising the service
• There must be ways of locating the service
• There must be ways of managing the service (install, update, remove)
• There must be ways of invoking the service

Breakdown of unit

The unit basically splits into two parts

• What is needed to make devices into internet services?
• How can you make use of internet services?