How did we get here? I could use several lifetimes up just in projects. The tools available to the masses seem to be fueled by IoT. We can all engineer a little IoT, apparently.
I own the Amazon Echo, a.k.a. “Alexa”, which is a really cool as a voice-activated IoT-input tool. There’s a site on Amazon dedicated to developers for using Alexa, and apparently a $100M investment “to fuel voice technology innovation.” At first, I found myself saying “please” and “thank you” after commands to set a timer directed at Alexa. There’s a satisfaction to hear her immediately respond that she’s setting a timer. No nagging required.
I can also use Alexa with IFTTT.com, an IoT cloud server. IFTTT (If This Then That) has servers that perform functions with commands over the internet. Think of IFTTT as a kind of Twitter for Things. Alexa sits on the kitchen counter, and besides being the world’s most expensive egg timer, she can take voice commands to find my phone. With kids in the house and cordless landline telephones, you can’t just pick up a phone and speed dial your cell phone. You have to find a cordless phone first, which is never on the base. Then I found out I could yell at Alexa to “find my phone!” as rudely as I liked. (You can be mean to IoT and robots and they don’t flinch. Sometimes Alexa will make a dry remark like, “I am glad to be of use to you,” if you insult her, but mostly she doesn’t care.)
When I yell a command at Alexa to find my phone, she sends a message to IFTTT.com, and then my phone rings with a phone number from California. (When I actually answer, it starts a robo-dialogue of how it will talk for 5 minutes to give me a fake emergency to allow a polite escape from boring people.) All I had to do is “program” her on IFTTT.com to get it set up. “Program” is in quotes because it really was more like filling out a form with my phone number and what I planned to tell Alexa to get her to trigger IFTTT to call my cell phone. They refer to the programs as “recipes,” which I guess is meant to sound less intimidating.
How else is IoT useful? I use Alexa for my kids’ second brain. Children regularly need their parent’s brains to remember to do things, like to continue eating breakfast instead of staring off into space. Now Alexa does that. I ask Alexa to set a timer for 1, 2 and 3 minutes (to remind them to keep eating), for 15 minutes (to remind them to get book bags, coats, and lunches ready) and then another to remind them to go out the door. My kids just say “Alexa, stop” to stop the alarm tone. And then she dings again for the next reminder. I wish she could say specific things like, “Don’t forget to take your dishes to the sink!” in relation to specific timer-names, but maybe Alexa 2 will do that. I could use a nag-bot that attaches to a kid’s lapel, never falls off, and never gets lost. A portable Alexa could fit in my ear like one of those invisible in-ear hearing aids and whisper reminders into my ear and bits of information (a.k.a. augment reality), although I don’t know how such an IoT hearing aid would be able to do face-recognition (to remember names for me.) Nag-bot could tell me that a storm is coming and I should leave for home a little earlier that day, or automatically tell me which direction to walk in once I re-appear to GPS after emerging from a store into the parking lot.
IoT is indeed making my life easier. You just have to find out which bits of IoT can help you. I find that IoT comes in handiest for forgetfulness, which is baked into kids.
IFTTT comes in handy for more than just “programming” Alexa. There are almost 300 “channels” of IoT products and services that are registered at IFTTT.com, as of this writing, including everything from smart GE appliances to WEMo and WINK home automation devices. And there’s an entire section devoted to DIY Electronics that includes channels for working with Little Bits, Seeed (of Seeed Studio), and Adafruit.
The BMW channel can make your BMW car text you if your car is speeding (for when you loan the BMW to your teenager) or it can text your kids when you are near school to pick them up. (Sorry, Apple people, this is an Android-only recipe.) IoT has the promise of making our busy lives a little more orderly.
What else can you do with this? Adafruit has a recipe for notifying your smartphone if a door is opened. You could modify this to notify you of any switch action, as long as the switch’s means of is within internet shouting distance (i.e., WiFi is enabled and nearby.) While fun once it’s working, the number of accounts and passwords required to navigate IFTTT plus any channels you sign in to are a hassle.
Which brings me to the conclusion that IoT will be bogged down by passwords in some way or another. I am still waiting for strangers to hack my Alexa and start talking to me in my own kitchen, which would mean they hacked into my IFTTT account. So they can make my phone ring. I’ll just block it. Which means signing into another account.
So IoT also means more accounts with more login IDs and passwords. How did we get here?
Lynnette Reese holds a B.S.E.E from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge. Lynnette has worked at Mouser Electronics, Texas Instruments, Freescale (now NXP), and Cypress Semiconductor. Lynnette has three kids and occasionally runs benign experiments on them. She is currently saving for the kids’ college and eventual therapy once they find out that cauliflower isn’t a rare albino broccoli (and other white lies.)