The North Carolina Regional Internet of Things (RIoT) MeetUp put in a solid show for what promises to be a big year for IoT at the Durham Bulls Stadium in downtown Durham, NC.
If you are looking for a technical talks on IoT devices, you probably won’t get much out of these presentations as they are very high level and more sales pitch-ish but one of the things I liked about them is that they get you thinking about what is possible in IoT and what might be the next big IoT device as well as being suitable for people starting out in this space.
I recommend going to Matthew Davis’ talk which was towards the end (go to 35:15) as a better starting point and then maybe revisiting the speakers below as he gives better context to what the other guys are taking about.
Chris Hare of Thingovation gave a good broad summary of IoT (go to 6:40), where it has come from and where it is going also pointing out some of the unpractical reasons that could hold evolution back with manufacturers of previously unconnected devices now facing a whole new world with regulation potentially creating a significant bottleneck.
An important point was that whilst companies like Samsung threw 8 different smart watches into the market last year being able to see which one would stick, which is challenging if you are a big company, when you are a small company having to navigate patents and so on entering the market could be even more tricky
David Houghton of Bright Wolf presented next (go to 19:40), a software company that was founded by a couple of guys who’s vision was to build a platform for IoT before IoT was born from their experience in connected devices. Now their platform hosts IoT applications, capturing and analysing data, generating alerts and reports and communicating with the back-end enterprise to provide updates.
Brian Bell of MyPayWay (go to 19:00) explained the idea behind their device coming from an awkward situation when Brian did not have any spare cash in his pocket to pay for a gratuity to a bus driver from an airport to the hotel. Their device, which is held by tip takers or donation box custodians like museums allow service to receive money over the internet from embarrassed parties that don’t have spare change knocking about.
