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ead the following: “It’s getting warm in here today. I’d say it’s probably reached something like 22°C. That’s a l ittle bit

warmer than I usually like it.”“Just checked on the grumpy

ficus. The soil seems wet enough for

him. It would be nice if he stopped complaining, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

“Tom’s off doing something. He posted a photo to Instagram.”

These may sound like the tweets of a solicitous housekeeper. Actually, they are the tweets of a solicitous house. Tom Coates, formerly of Yahoo! and now cofounder of the

startup Product Club, has taught his house to tweet. Responding to inputs from sensors attached to his electrical items, thermostat and mobile apps such as Foursquare and Instagram, a service called IFTTT (If This Then That) posts regular, pithy updates from the electronic scribes behind the @houseofcoates Twitter account.

CISCOINTERNET OF EVERYTHING THE CONNECTED HOME

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Coates’s “talking house” caught the attention of media sources waking up to the trend known as the Internet of Things, or the Internet of Everything (WIRED 07.13). It appeared on TV, in magazines and across the web. One wit even created a parody account, @hauntedcoateshouse, with

messages like “I just turned on the downstairs lights. But one of you isn’t casting a shadow”.

A WORLD THAT TALKSIt is a truism that technologists often try to create the world they read about in science fiction. Today’s tablet computers would fit neatly on the bridge of the starship Enterprise along with phasers and tricorders. If anything, they would look too sleekly futuristic.

Despite their many problems, jet-packs

and flying cars are still being developed. And the science-fiction staple of the home that greets you in the morning, runs a bath and makes your coffee, has been fighting to exist for decades.

In the early 80s, Roy Mason built three “homes of the future” in the US, with shells made from polyurethane foam and interiors crammed with technology. These “Xanadu houses” used computers to play music, cook food and deter intruders with spoken warnings. Designed as a vision of the future, they became a vision of the past: the last home, its innovative foam walls stained with mould and ruined by neglect, was demolished in 2005.

In 1989, 18 Japanese companies col laborated to create the TRON Intelligent House. Sensors monitored conditions in the house and automated

.1 6 8 .0. 2 5 3SMART PLUGSElectrical wiring can often be difficult to access – but wirelessly connected plugs can be fitted to appliances, or switches placed between the plug and socket. Belkin’s WeMo switches can be remotely activated or triggered by motion. Either way, you’ll never catch yourself wondering if you left the iron on again.

SMART LIGHTINGPhilips’ Hue smart bulbs are at the heart of a growing lighting ecosystem – connecting to a wireless controller, they can change colour to suit a mood, light up on a schedule to act as a wake-up call, make an empty house look populated, or use preset “light recipes” designed to assist study or promote relaxation.

SMART THERMOSTATWith obvious energy savings to be made, heating is a competitive market, with complex programmable thermostats being challenged by web-enabled, app-augmented smart systems. The Nest learning thermostat – built by former Apple personnel and recently acquired by Google – combines sleek design with features including motion detection and adaptation to its owners’ behaviour.Nest launched in the US in 2011. Meanwhile, British and European competitors have sprung up, including the British Gas Hive system for connected devices, which has launched with a thermostat, and the geofencing Tado.

DEVICES #2

Heat andLight

SMART LOCKSLocks like the Lockitron, Goji and the Yves Béhar-designed August offer keyless entry, and “passes” can be added to and deleted from phones. Goji’s built-in camera sends pictures of the person at the door; the owner can unlock it from any distance if their face fits.

WIRELESS CAMER ASWireless CCTV cameras have become a common feature in commercial properties, but the connected home’s cameras have

a gentler feel. The internet-connected Dropcam streams sound and video to a web page or mobile app, but can also store up to 30 days of footage to the cloud, to edit and share.

FIRE ALARMSNest, best known for their smart thermostat, also manufactures a combination smoke and carbon monoxide detector. The Nest Protect can be silenced with a wave of the hand if the situation is under control. Smoke and carbon monoxide

can also be checked remotely, room by room.

SMART SENSORSAn array of sensors can be hooked up to smart devices. The Twine box from Supermechanical can be customised with many different sensors, connected to a wireless network and programmed with another if/then interface: if a damp sensor is triggered, then it will send a tweet or text message to say that the roof is leaking – or the washing machine has flooded.

DEVICES #1

Security and safety

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systems turned lights on and off and opened windows to maintain a stable environment.

But these were proofs of concept, costing millions. The revolution they predicted never took place. So how can Coates, a British expat in San Francisco, create a talking house?

THE INTERNET OF EVERYTHINGThe simple answer is connectivity. And not just connectivity, but hyperconnectivity. The “homes of the future” built in the past had walls filled with wires, connecting the various devices. Changing a function was a major operation.

The world is still a long way from total connectivity. But today there are overlapping, invisible networks – home Wi-Fi, municipal networks, 3G and now 4G – that provide more or less constant, wire-free connections. As we move through these networks,

our phones and mobile devices shift seamlessly between them, uploading and downloading data.

When things – be they tablets, laptops or phones – connect over networks, they increase in value. A phone that can make calls on the go is useful. A mobile phone that can access the internet is more useful. A mobile phone that can tell where you are and how to get to where you need to be is more useful still.

Connected things do more – so logically, there is an increasing drive to connect more things. In 2000, there were around 200 million things connected to the internet. In 2008, that number exceeded the number of people on Earth for the first time. By 2020, estimates from the likes of Cisco put the number of connected entities – people, items, smart devices and so on – at up to 50 billion.

In the old-fashioned “networked”

model, devices connected directly – your thermostat was linked to your radiators, which got hotter or cooler. Flick a switch, and a light turned on or off. “Internetworked” devices, on the other hand, still connect to each other, but also to cloud-based services over the Internet. So, a burglar alarm in London can warn a traveller in Helsinki when it is triggered, and that traveller can immediately watch the live video feed from a security camera. Or a third-party service such as IFTTT can take a temperature reading and turn it into a tweet.

L a rg e b u s i n e s s e s h a ve , f o r some time, been networking and automating functions such as heating and lighting. RFID tags and other physical “proofs” of digital identity allow objects with progressively greater sophistication – such as motion sensors and ambient light monitors – to communicate when, say, determining which lights to turn on. However, the opportunities are now growing in size and scale.

Like so many transformations, smart buildings are being driven by money and technology. The cost of making devices smart is dropping as computing power becomes cheaper. New protocols for connect ing devices, such as Bluetooth Low Energy, consume less power without sacrificing range. And, as low-cost processors become smaller and more power efficient, smart devices can fit into new places. When it costs almost nothing to put a solar-powered chip into or on to every new item, why not do it? And, as the world becomes more connected, new uses for the Internet of Everything will emerge.

The engineers who built the internet as a bombproof route for military communications never anticipated the sheer volume of traffic – from vital business intelligence to amusing

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pictures of cats – it would enable. In the same way, an exponential growth in connected things will create new markets and businesses – some of which we will not understand until they arrive.

CONNECTING TO CASHThe Internet transformed business and commerce – and the “thingification” of the internet has the potential to transform it all over again. This goes beyond selling connected devices, although exciting startups and major telecoms and DIY companies are already jostling for position. In the Cisco white paper “Embracing the Internet of Everything”, the “value at stake” – that is, the profit created by lower costs and higher revenues that businesses stand to take or miss a share in over the next ten years – is estimated at a huge $14.4 trillion (£8.8 trillion).

Smart buildings make up a significant part of that realisable value. Smarter factories will be able to retool production by delivering new

i n s t r u c t i o n s t o every machine at once. Meanwhile, sensors on every part of a product c a n c o n f i r m

that they are functioning and correctly assembled, and minimise wasted materials and defective models. Homes and offices will be easier to monitor, maintain and manage remotely. And, of course, inventive applications of these cheap, low-cost sensors will potentially save – and make – companies money.

THE BYO-DILEMMAAt the heart of the smart building is connectivity, and also mobility. The smartphone – for many people the first always-present connected device they encounter – turns out to be a perfect remote control for many of these incoming technologies.

Smartphones and tablets are two-way streets – not only do they allow users to monitor and adjust many different connected systems, but they also pass data up to networks. Geofencing – marking out particular locations where a device will trigger

CONNECTING THE UNCONNECTED

CiscoCisco is helping to bring the Internet of Everything into reality, by ensuring that data can move quickly, safely and constantly through the biggest and busiest network in human history. Cisco network architecture and wireless access points, and its cloud solutions, help to connect and direct the technologies of tomorrow. Its web security services

protect smart networks from malware, exploits and compromised devices.

For more about the Internet of Everything: internetofeverything.cisco.com/en-gbTo see how Cisco is making the IoE possible:cisco.co.uk/tomorrowFor more on BYOD:bit.ly/1fxkiLZ

DEVICES #3

Friends and fun

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GOOD NIGHT LAMPThe Good Night Lamp is in fact two lamps – one large, one small. Shared between geographically distant friends, relatives or partners, when the bigger lamp is turned on or off, the smaller lamp follows suit.

TOYMAILThe Kickstarter-funded Toymail is aimed at children – the toy “mailmen” receive and deliver messages from loved ones.

BOTANICALL SA simple kit, Botanicalls are connected moisture sensors on a leaf-shaped circuit board. When the soil they are placed in gets dry, they send a message to their owner – and when the plants are watered they tweet a “thank you”.

LITTLE PRINTER Produced by Berg, the Little Printer repurposes thermal printer rolls to create a personalised newspaper. Based

on 150 apps and publications, it delivers timely printed content including Sudoku, news stories, popular tweets or messages from friends.

CONNEC TED LIFECisco’s Connected Life tools allow businesses to deliver the IoE to the home. Videoscape connects consumers and their devices to cloud-based media, creating personalised, synchronised and social experiences.

particular commands – becomes a powerful tool in a connected world. Mobile devices will act as triggers for all kinds of automated actions – such as turning on lights and heating – as well as ID cards and security passes.

The power of mobility is a double-

edged sword, however. Businesses are already coping with the security challenges of employees bringing their own devices to work. When those same devices might control vital remote functions, the stakes get higher still.

CONTROL SYSTEMSOne gap in the current connected home is a dominant service to tie together every different device. As a result, homes are controlled by multiple disparate apps, while hardware and software are continually developed. In the US, giants like Staples, Lowe’s and ComCast are aiming to provide complete home automation packages. Cisco’s AT&T Digital Life Controller wirelessly manages an array of devices with Cisco’s Z-Wave communications radios. And startups such as Smartthings and Revolv offer app-based automation solutions around a central hub.

CLOUD SERVICESBeyond the hardware, cloud solutions to connect and control multiple devices, regardless of distance, are offered by IFTTT, and by London-based Xively (formerly Pachube) and the Berg Cloud, which are creating platforms for connected devices.

ENERGY EFFICIENCYThe smart grid, with real-time monitoring, will lower energy consumption and identify inefficient or defective appliances. The Energeno Wattson started life as a simple tool to measure electricity consumption: its product range now extends to systems to measure and distribute energy from “off-grid” sources such as solar panels. “Microgeneration” will help to realise the energy savings of smart buildings, along with demand management: a smart dishwasher might recommend waiting an hour before activation, because the grid tells it that demand is high.

DEVICES #4

Connection and control

OPEN – AND SHUTAs soon as systems join the Internet of Everything, they become both more valuable and more vulnerable. A security flaw in a brand of network-connected cameras led to hundreds of home security and baby monitoring camera feeds being accessible to prying eyes – and the first ruling by the American Federal Trade Commission relating to the Internet of Things.

Google’s Australian headquarters was found by security researchers to have a hackable heating system, which could be remotely manipulated. Another, anonymous researcher created a benign “botnet” – a network of devices to which he gained illicit access – of 400,000 machines. This was done not with high-level hacking, but by trying four username and password combinations using only the words “root” and “admin”.

On a corporate level, the risks posed by hackers – whether they are industrial saboteurs or teenaged trolls – gaining access to key systems is clear. But the

thought of a stranger using a baby monitor to watch or try to speak to a child – which happened to a Houston resident’s sleeping two-year-old in 2012 – is an even more visceral threat.

Along with security, which companies such as Cisco are addressing, the Internet of Everything wil l need accessibil ity and persistence. A distributed system where a single employee can monitor the heating systems in a dozen locations, or a smart lock that can be opened through a web interface, is useful – unless it cannot be used. When access not just to websites but to locations might be controlled by networked systems, making sure access is continuous and that there is a backup plan are both vital.

The transformation is already beginning, and will affect the way we live, travel, monitor our health and interact with others – just as the internet has. Success – for those who create and those who use the Internet of Everything – will come to those who find the perfect balance of access and security.

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